


Ingenue

by abovetheserpentine



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alpha Zayn, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Blow Jobs, Body Dysphoria, Body Horror, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Omega Harry, Rimming, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Telepathic Bond, Telepathic Sex, Violence, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 19:16:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 60,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15322416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abovetheserpentine/pseuds/abovetheserpentine
Summary: “Itisa choice,” Zayn says, and Harry tries not to flinch at his tone, confident and assuming, “By walking into the woods, you made it.”“I didn’t know what choice I was making!” Harry yells, angry and ignoring the flash of Zayn’s eyes. “It’s not a choice if I didn’t know it existed!”Or, Harry gets bitten by a werewolf.





	Ingenue

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there, it's been a while!
> 
> This fic was a culmination of about a year's brainstorm, and six months of writing through injury. It's been an absolute effort, but I'm somewhat pleased with the result. I wouldn't have gotten here if not for everyone bugging me about when I was going to be posting. So thank you!
> 
> I'd also like to thank the moderators of the [1D Collab](http://the1dcollab.tumblr.com) \- particularly [Katelyn](http://zlall.tumblr.com), who I spoke to one on one quite a lot - for all their hard work in organising such an awesome collection for us all to enjoy.
> 
> And, of course, I'd like to thank the absolutely darling [Camie](http://ohnoballoons.tumblr.com) for her art. She's super talented, and absolutely knew the vibe of the story from the get-go. What a complete pleasure it was to work with her for this.
> 
> Finally, please be advised that this fic deals with some **dark themes** surrounding the body. If you think you might be triggered by any discussion of changing/transitioning bodies, horror at one's own body, or mild self-harm as a result of these things - please read with caution, and do so at your own risk.
> 
> Title taken from the song _Ingenue_ by Atoms For Peace.

The first thing he does when he finds out is cut his hair.

“That’s not a thing,” Niall supplies helpfully from the doorway, smile on his face. His hair is brown and fluffy, creases on his cheeks from lying in the same position too long. Harry doesn’t want to look at him, but there’s an undercurrent to his words that doesn’t let him think about it much – his eyes dart to Niall at every sentence. Everything that Harry is churns uncomfortably.

It feels like there’s a sea inside him. There’s a tide that comes and goes, a promise that Harry is helpless to keep. Every wave rolls into and out of him, the current swirling around in the wet and stopping Harry from reaching the shore; that familiar, comfortable presence. Sometimes in the black of night, when not even the moon bothers to leave its bed, Harry thinks he’ll never get there. He’s trapped in a rip and no matter how fast or how hard he swims, he just gets taken further out – the only problem being that he’ll never be able to drown as he is now. The thought comes to him rather cynically.

“Don’t knock my process, Niall,” replies Harry. It was meant to come out light and unaffected. The softness to his voice betrays him, however, and Harry’s eyes drift from Niall to avoid acknowledging the look on his face – a mix between understanding and pity. _Strange,_ Harry thinks with thinly veiled panic.

It’s not much hair at all. But the curled ends falling to the ground in their tatty, old strands and brushing against Harry’s toes make his breath come out in a stutter. He wiggles the appendages, hearing the cracks and the way they reverberate throughout the tiled room, an echo so faint that no one else in the house but the two of them would be able to pick it out.

There’s no one else. Harry thinks it rather poetic. Feels like maybe there’s not so much a sea inside him but an island, so unknown and barren that even Harry himself hasn’t the faintest inkling where he might be.

“You’re makin’ a mess, mate,” Niall tells him, and Harry sees raised eyebrows and folded arms. Niall looks so familiar, leaning against the jamb as he is. The introspective sea welcomes him like an old friend, a reunion that doesn’t feel like one as much as it feels like Niall never left, so deeply entrenched in Harry that nothing could part them.

Harry tears his eyes away, glimpses the wan face in the mirror, and wonders how he’s going to run away from this.

His reflection provides no answers – and it’d be naïve of him to think it would. Still. The glassy green eyes, the dark circles that sit so comfortably beneath them; the sinewy arms and legs, littered with ink; the trail of hair from navel to the base of his cock; the extra nipples, brown and smudged against tanned skin as they are. Well. Harry wonders if anyone else can see it like he can – the trembling of his bones, the anger in the lines around his mouth, the hopelessness in the stray wisps of hair that sit in his collarbones.

Harry doesn’t say anything. A little mess in this unfamiliar bathroom is the least of his problems, and the part of him that relishes in the pain of others – that longs to see people suffer for what he’s been through – wants someone else to have to deal with it. He discards any care at all, because it’s not his mum or his sister who’s going to have to clean it up. It’s a kidnapper. It’s a criminal.

He scrunches up his face, sinuses stinging, before he turns around. The scissors clatter to the floor and Harry ignores Niall’s exclamation of “Jesus!” as he shoves past him, reaching for a pair of boxer briefs lying on the corner of the bed and stumbling into them, racing through the house until he manages to burst through the back doors. The glass panes make an awful sound, like laminated paper wobbling back and forth.

Wilderness stretches out past the backyard as far as Harry’s eyes can see, the woods greener that he’d ever imagined when he’d first looked up the path on Google. It’d seemed so simple, then. Going out there alone with his backpack and enough food for a few days. His bike’s probably broken somewhere, torn up. His phone’s back at the bed and breakfast – and maybe he deserves all this, considering how stupid he’d been.

 _No,_ he thinks vehemently, though his emotions dull to a low simmer as he crouches to sit on the steps leading down to the overgrown yard, _no one deserves this._

It’s quiet. Not even the birds are making their usual end of day sounds, talking to each other as if coming home after a long day at work. Harry thinks it might’ve been peaceful, once. Maybe if he was still human, he’d be able to appreciate it better – though there’s a sense of irony there considering Harry has experienced first-hand that, if anything, humanity doesn’t have the ability to sense much at all.

The blades of grass glint in the fading sun, and Harry can feel Niall still in the house, muttering to himself about nothing in particular. Harry supposes by now he’s used to being heard wherever he goes.

“It’s not fair,” Harry mumbles, and Niall pauses. The woods are eerie without their usual atmospheric sounds, and looking into them feels like looking into a deep void. Harry stares long and hard, and when Niall replies it’s like he’s sitting right next to him, gazing into the same hole of nothingness and wondering the exact same thing.

“I know.”

Harry twists to look behind him. The gaping entranceway opens into the living room, basking in the light of dusk. Everything’s wooden; old and faded, just the way Harry likes it. It’s filled to the brim with memories – from the scratches at the base of the stairs to the old throw covering the back of the ratty grey sofa. Past all of that lies the dingy hallway and then even further the kitchen, the brass taps worn with character. The frayed tea towel looks like it’s about to dislodge, a stain on its corner letting Harry know it fell into something wet and brown earlier. Maybe coffee, given the smell. There are bread crumbs on the counter from lunch, and the cupboard next to the sink is ajar.

Harry sees it all in excruciating detail, like his vision is taunting him with his truth.

He knows that around the corner is the bathroom, Niall still puttering around. Then at the back of the house, behind the staircase and to Harry’s left is the study. It’s locked, but from the outside Harry had seen the windows – not unlike those of a greenhouse – and the cloths draped over easels. Harry’s not clueless, even if he’s sure Niall thinks so. Harry was studying art history before all of this. He knows what artistry looks like.

It makes him wonder about who’s painting in such conditions, with such a life.

He knows, but he wonders.

He turns back to the garden, his eyes searching the bark that line the trees and hearing, for the first time, the tweet of a bird.

He stays outside until the sun sets, and then he walks through the living room to the kitchen to meet Niall there. Niall, who’s cooking the pasta for too long and burning the onions. Harry doesn’t say anything. The table that sits off to the side, rickety and well-loved, holds his attention if only for the fact that he lets his nails follow the lines of age in the wood and wonders whether he’ll grow old with something like this, a piece of wood to remember all the little moments by.

“You’re maudlin,” Niall comments as he plonks down a bowl of spaghetti in front of Harry. He returns with his own shortly after, pulling out one of the two empty chairs across from Harry to settle in. Harry digs his fork into the food, holding back a wince at the scrape of metal on porcelain.

“S’only gonna get worse.” Niall admits through a mouthful of dinner, breaking apart some bread and dipping it into his sauce. Harry wants to make a joke, tell him he’ll fuck up his sauce to pasta ratio if he keeps doing that.

He remains silent, eyes following the fall of tomato, tuna and burnt onion from his fork. As far as prison meals go, it’s better than most. Despite the rumbling of his stomach, however, Harry finds himself unable to swallow more than a few mouthfuls. It tastes good, but it doesn’t taste like anything. Like suddenly Harry’s palate has changed, and human food just doesn’t cut it. He almost thinks to ask – what do we eat? – but that seems too far-fetched even for this fucked up situation.

Niall explained so much, and yet Harry still can’t seem to wrap his head around any of it.

He washes the meagre pile of dishes next to the sink and flinches when Niall gives him a solid, solitary clap on the back. The other man lingers, lets his forefinger and thumb drift to briefly squeeze at the tense muscles in Harry’s neck before walking away, the huff of him landing on the sofa grating on Harry’s ears.

Harry leaves the kitchen once he’s done, shuffling up the stairs and turning the lock on the bedroom door even if it doesn’t mean anything these days.

Everything in him wants to collapse onto the bed, breathe in long and deep and hope for the best. That’s not how it’s going to work, though. Harry feels the desperation in him, the need to be accepted; and then there’s the resignation on the other side of him, on another island tens of miles away.

He sits down on the bathroom floor, leaning back against the tub. The ridge of it digs into the base of his skull. Unable to sense his hair sitting so comfortably on his shoulders, he feels naked. Every nerve in him has been ripped apart and put on display, he knows – but somehow, it’s the hair that’s the worst part of it.

He drops his head forward and lets himself feel, for one moment, the puckered, healed over wound that scars his neck. It makes him shiver, and he flattens his curls down to cover it up. A gladness seeps into him. He doesn’t ever have to look at it if he doesn’t want to; it’s not visible in a mirror, he won’t look down and glimpse it on his arm or his torso. It’s gone if Harry wants it to be.

 _It’s not that easy,_ he scolds himself, _not when your skin broke apart and something snuck in, unwanted and unmovable._

Feeling bitter in a heartbeat, Harry shifts until his bare shoulders hit the cool tiles of the adjacent wall, his body wedged between basin and tub. He lets his head rest against the side of the basin cupboards as his gaze slides over the room, then past that over to the bed, to one of its bedside tables littered with personal paraphernalia. There are slippers, of all things, underneath the frame on the nearest side.

Harry pulls his knees up and wraps his arms around them, holding on tightly to his wrist with his left hand. He closes his tired eyes. This has to be enough.

There’s the tick of the clock, though, that keeps him awake. It might be that an hour passes, he thinks – if he’d bothered to count the seconds – before he opens his eyes again. He focuses immediately on the moving hands, and then he’s hit with the sudden realisation as the clock strikes 7:58. It’s been two days since he said he’d be back.

Harry Styles is officially missing.

 

***

 

He wakes up early. It’s still dark, his eyes able to see the pattern in the decorative tiles only because of who he is now. He should be cold – he should be fighting off shivers, if anything made sense. Instead he’s burning hot, the tiles a cool relief from the feverish temperature. His stomach cramps like he’s eaten something bad, and Harry curses the tuna from the previous night. Niall might’ve burnt the onions, but it seems like he undercooked the fish. If Harry were feeling anything but exhausted and on the verge of tears, he might make a racket, wake Niall up from his room down the hall.

He pushes the meat of his palms into his eyes, seeing rainbows against black and fighting off the sting of emotions swirling inside him. The tears fall anyway, and they’re still falling when he stands, shuffling out of the room and letting himself sit on the bed. His bones seem to relax, everything in him loosening as his arse hits the covers. They’re a deep green – forest green, which makes Harry want to laugh and then cry in the same breath. Sweat drips down his back and Harry squirms uncomfortably, gripping at the doona and inhaling deeply. He’s accosted with all the smells he’s been trying to ignore – something smoky, like a wood fire but not as pleasant; a tacky sort of smell that’s unidentifiable but makes his nose scrunch up subconsciously; and then there’s a lingering hint of saffron, like someone’s rubbed some over Harry’s top lip a few hours ago. There are more, of course – the salt of his own sweat, the musty nature of the old wood, the sharpness of the aged brass door handles. Harry thinks this was never meant to be a place for people like them – not when the smells are so affecting.

Niall would probably say it’s just Harry. He’s new, isn’t he? It’s only going to get worse before it gets better. Harry grips the covers tighter, his knuckles aching as they whiten – it’s quiet outside, but there’s the intermittent hoot of an owl, maybe a cicada here and there. Though they could be miles away, for all Harry can decipher; but maybe they know to stay back, to leave the two of them alone.

The cramps come back with a vengeance and Harry hunches over, his fingers feeling old and worn as he clenches his fists even more tightly. His hair falls to brush his cheeks, and it tickles because he’s shaking, exhales a tremble on the light breeze coming through the open window above the bed.

He looks outside, tells himself it’s just one more minute, and then he can sleep. The pain will go away after another minute. Just one more. And another.

“Hey,” Niall interrupts, and Harry lets go of the bed hurriedly. It’s light out, the sun peeking through the trees. Reds and pinks are sharp and distinct against blue. Apparently it’s been more than a minute, then a minute, then another – he’s pushed through to dawn, sleepless and aching all over.

Harry runs a hand through his hair, trying to hide its tremor.

“Breakfast’ll be ready in twenty minutes, Haz.”

“Don’t call me that.” Harry demands, though it’s soft. He imagines he looks like he wouldn’t be able to demand anything. It’s more of a suggestion, probably. And a weak one, at that.

“Alright,” Niall acquiesces. Harry looks at him, but his blank face gives nothing away. Harry wishes he could sense him like he senses the others, but Niall’s taking longer to latch on. He thinks of the hours just passed, the way he’d sat there and stared at the horizon like it’d do anything.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so great – after all, if Harry is sensing Niall, then the reverse is also true.

“You need to sleep,” Niall advises thirty-three minutes later over lightly burnt toast and soggy eggs. No risk of dying of it, Harry knows – it’d been one of the first things Niall had told him. Like it was something to be thankful for. The food rolls over in Harry’s stomach, but he swallows down the bile and continues to pick at the rest of it that’s on his plate. “Trust me. You’ll feel better when you turn if you sleep.”

“And when exactly is that?” asks Harry, letting his fork fall with a clatter. He stares at Niall, eyebrows raised. “‘Cause you’re tellin’ me shit, and I’m a bit sick of it.”

Niall rolls his eyes. Harry lets himself get offended for a few seconds before he pushes his chair back with a loud scrape, trying not to wince as he leaves this stranger to clean up.

The outside air has a bite to it, the sky more clouds than sun right now – but there’s no moisture in the air, so he knows it’ll be a dry day.

Though it’s not like he can make much use of it at the moment, tied to the house like he is. The thought crosses his mind that he’s like a dog on a leash and he laughs to himself, wry and unamused.

Niall joins him on the grass a fair while later, and Harry smells soap and sunscreen on him. The sun’s further up in the sky, almost dead centre. Midday. Time seems to go so quickly now, even if it’s only been seventy-two hours and Harry can’t fathom staying here for much longer.

“Sorry,” Niall apologises after six minutes of silence, the two of them looking up at the clouds through the forest canopy. There’s a wide gap, given the house sits behind them. It’s like looking into that blackness of the forest – the innocuous leaves that come in at the edges of his vision mean he could be anywhere. He could be somewhere closer to Holmes Chapel, to his home. His mum could be a stone’s throw away, telling him to come eat his sandwich before it goes bad. His sister could be groaning next to him about how she’s never coming hiking again. Robin, his step-dad, could be trying to purify water at the creek Harry can distantly hear trickling away. Harry could be fucking anywhere but lying on the grass beside a bloke named Niall who woke him up three days ago and told him he’d been bitten by a fucking _werewolf._

“Sorry,” Niall repeats, and he sounds it – quiet, resigned. Harry realises that other place inside him doesn’t feel like that anymore; they’re restless, frustrated. Harry understands. “I know this isn’t what you wanted.”

“No fucking shit,” Harry blurts out, unable to help himself. There’s a pause before he sighs, exhaling loudly. “Sorry. I’m... this isn’t me.”

“It is now,” Niall says cryptically; Harry expects him to get up and leave, to go make food or read a book like he’s been doing this whole time. Instead, he continues, “It’s not bad, mate. Better than dying, at any rate.”

“I wasn’t going to die,” Harry begins, but Niall cuts him off.

“He didn’t mean to,” Niall explains, and this is the first time he’s alluded to how Harry ended up here, how it all went down. Harry can barely remember – there’s just the imprint of fear and disgust that’s stayed with him, a vague memory of orange eyes framed by black. It’s like something out of a horror film, but the terror has hung around. There’s been no laughter after, at how awful it was. Harry misses real life, suddenly, and wonders whether he’ll ever be able to do something like that again. “It was instinct.”

Harry mulls that over for a moment, jaw clenching. “Instinct to bite me?”

Niall doesn’t say anything for a minute or two, and when he does it feels irrelevant. Harry huffs in annoyance.

“Louis – you’ll meet him – he’s better at explaining this than I am. Has all these jokes he’s stored up. He’ll love having someone new to try them out on.”

Harry splutters, turning his head to look at the side of Niall’s profile; Niall, whose arms are behind his head as he gazes up at the sky like he’s got no cares in the world.

“I’m not some–” Niall turns his head, face impassive, “some kind of entertainment!”

“Are you always this dramatic?” Niall asks, simple and to the point. “Because whilst Louis might love it, it’s not going to do you any favours with Zayn.”

“ _Zayn,_ ” Harry snarls, sitting up so he doesn’t have to look at Niall’s face anymore. His stomach gives another cramp, though it feels more like an echo of the previous night than the actual thing itself. Without permission, Harry feels his eyes well up with unshed tears. “I don’t care about _Zayn._ ”

“Harry–” Niall sighs. He sits up, rubbing hands over his face tiredly. Harry lets a few tears fall, hoping Niall won’t notice – but his head snaps up, his eyes roving over Harry’s face. He looks older than his twenty-two years, and Harry envies him – he would give anything to feel older, wiser. To know what the hell is going to happen now. Instead it seems like everything is just out of his reach, his fingers brushing against clarity like they would the surface of water. Harry pulls on the ends of his hair, letting the sharp sting distract him. The tears continue regardless, uncaring of Harry’s need for calm.

“What’s Zayn doing that he can’t be here?” Harry chokes out, his cheeks wet and likely red. “He’s meant to– he’s meant to be the, the–” He can’t bring himself to say the word, as preposterous as it is, “The _leader._ How’s he gonna lead us when he’s not even here?”

“Shite,” Niall mutters, and then he’s shifting to pull Harry in, his arm around his shoulders. Harry lets his head fall to rest on Niall’s chest – he’s so tired. He hurts. He just wants to go home. “Harry, I’m sorry.”

“How can you live like this?” Harry murmurs, and he lifts his head. Niall brushes at his cheeks roughly, shooting him a nervous smile.

“It’s not so bad,” He repeats his earlier words, hands dropping from Harry’s face, “Better than dying.”

Harry frowns, turning his head away to look off into the woods.

Niall leaves him to go inside after an hour, and Harry won’t admit that the touch had helped.

Dinner is overcooked that night, but Harry eats numbly. He gets into bed – the side without the remnants of someone else – and wonders whether dying would be better than all this. Niall doesn’t seem to think so, but Niall’s been doing this for years – he was friends with Zayn before. He didn’t wake up to a stranger, wasn’t told he couldn’t see his family for the unforeseeable future.

The rest of the week goes by like that, with Harry cramping up at night. He takes to naps in the afternoon, has woken up to Niall peering down at him curiously every now and then. He remains quiet, keeps his distance – he doesn’t want to get attached, even if Niall is friendly. He keeps telling himself: they’ve trapped him here, and they won’t let him leave. Not at least for another month, and even then...

Harry feels sick to his stomach and finds himself throwing up after lunch most days; any time he thinks of his family, all of his belongings just strewn in that rented room at the bed and breakfast. Niall wouldn’t have been able to tell them anything if he’d gone to rectify things, not without Gemma storming down here and dragging Harry back home. Harry knows he’s a liability, a possible danger – but why does he have to stay with them this whole time? Can’t he just come back a few days before the full moon, spend the time between with his family?

The sweats start a week later, and by then Harry’s too used to feeling out of sorts that he barely registers it – not until Niall stares at him a little too long over lunch.

“What?” Harry huffs out, trying not to let the bite he’s been constantly feeling seep into his tone. There’s a stretch in his bones, like something waiting to burst free. He doesn’t let his mind linger – chooses instead to read the books scattered around the house, _Don Quixote_ his latest venture – and hopes it washes over him like oil on water.

“You been running?” Niall asks, as if he wouldn’t know. Niall can hear everything Harry does – there’s not a moment he’s not being watched by cool blue eyes. He wants to liken it to living under the same roof as his mother, adolescence on the brink of its beginning. Everything had felt too big, too exhausting for him then – most of all his mother’s protective embraces and inquisitive wonderings. Harry’d not always been the best son, snappy and moody. Gemma had taken the brunt of it, thankfully, but there’s no one like her around to be his victim this time. Instead, Niall sits back and watches as Harry unravels, like thread from a fraying blanket. He just wants Niall to cut him off, do away with him on the floor.

Harry doesn’t answer, instead letting his chair scrape on the old, wooden floorboards. He wants to clean – dust collects in the furthest most corners of the house, and he feels the ghost of his old hay fever tickle his nose. It’s a relief, though jarring, not to be sneezing every which way.

“Harry,” Niall starts, and Harry lets his shoulders hunch in over the sink, plate and cutlery clattering against the hard metal of the basin. It’s a large thing, like whoever bought it thought they’d have any matter of dish to clean by hand. Harry wonders if they even get enough power for a dishwasher out here. “C’mon, mate. This wallowing isn’t you.”

“You don’t even know me,” snaps Harry, irate. He turns around, trying to make his face go blank, neutral. He doesn’t want Niall to know what he’s feeling – he can sense the stirrings of the place inside him, like they’re waking to Harry’s ire, confused and groggy. Harry lets himself exhale, relaxed and slow, “You don’t know what I’m like,” he continues, calmly this time. His hands hang limp by his sides, fingertips brushing the sides of his jean-clad thighs. They’re not his usual – a little too wide at the waist, and tight in the thighs. They’re also light blue – a colour Harry doesn’t usually favour. They’re not Niall’s, but they’re someone’s and Harry has endless questions.

“Maybe not,” Niall shrugs, twisting in his chair with a forearm resting on its back. The wood looks grey in the light of dusk, and Harry wonders whether the dust is covering everything, or someone genuinely wanted it all to look old and faded, in need of love. “But I know a thing or two about wallowing, and it won’t help.”

His jaw aches as the muscles clench uncomfortably. He swings his head to look through the house, across the hallway to the living room. The ratty sofa probably has an indent of Harry embedded in it, these days.

“Maybe you could tell me something,” Harry blurts out, head turning back to the brunet man. Niall spreads his hands out as if to say go ahead – but the words stick in Harry’s throat, digging their talons into the sides of his oesophagus and refusing to show their faces to the room.

Niall’s eyes squint the slightest in the silence before he simply returns to his meal, plopping the last few forkfuls into his mouth; and then once he’s done, he comes up beside Harry to start washing, Harry moving aside stiffly.

Harry keeps _Don Quixote_ open well into the night, soaking his bed sheets despite the cool breeze that floats through the window above the bed.

 _And since whatever our adventurer thought, saw, or imagined,_ Harry reads; _seemed to him to be as it was in the books he’d read, as soon as he saw the inn he took it for a castle with its four towers and their spires of shining silver._

There’s an ugly beast that unfurls itself in Harry’s chest as the book falls to the floor, his stomach wreaking havoc on the rest of his body. It laughs and laughs and laughs, and when Harry wakes the next day after what could only be an hour or so of genuine rest, he wonders – is what he’s seeing real, or is it the result of endless Halloweens and Monster movies? Is it all so terrible because Harry believes it so, or because it truly is?

“ _Don Quixote_?” Niall questions the next day, and Harry looks up from his recline on the sofa in a daze. The late morning light shadows Niall, but even his silhouette seems amused. “Zayn loves that one.”

He shifts, allowing Harry to see his face – it’s soft, warm in the light of the sunny day, and utterly human.

It’s June 18th. They both have ten days until they’re no longer themselves.

“Why’re you naked?” Harry lets his eyes wander, though naked is a bit of an overstatement – bright orange board shorts adorn Niall’s hips, slung low. He’s pale, a smattering of blonde hair leading down to beneath the polyester. Harry lets the mention of Zayn’s name drift away from them like a leaf against a flowing current, weak and easily forgotten.

“Going for a swim in the creek just by here,” Niall explains, and carefully – oh so carefully – Harry relaxes back into the cushions, lifting the book back up to his face. “Well, I was goin’ to ask if ya wanted to come, but I s’pose I know.”

He leaves. Harry waits. He counts sixteen minutes and forty five seconds and then he drops the novel, treading on it in his haste and not bothering to see the ways in which he’s bent the pages. He rattles the back doors – locked – and then runs out the front, leaving it wide open.

The forest opens before him like the welcoming arms of his sister, and so Harry sprints. He leaps over fallen branches, lets the wind whip his hair about. He barely feels the touch of wayward sticks and leaves, the smaller canopy scratching at his face like it doesn’t want to be forgotten. His t-shirt sticks to him, his jean shorts tighter than are ideal for such a run.

Harry knows enough to try to obscure his tracks, using roots and rocks to mask them. His elbows tuck into his sides, his hands coming up sparingly to push aside foliage. The forest doesn’t seem to end but Harry keeps going, hearing the echo of his own panting breaths around him. He can’t hear much through it, but there aren’t any pounding footsteps behind him, nor any calls of his name. Leaving out of the back end of the property would’ve been better – easier to navigate – but Harry’s not going to be picky, not when Niall hasn’t left him alone for twenty days. At least, alone enough that he wouldn’t be able to hear him run.

He changes direction abruptly, hoping to confuse whoever might try to go after him. He must run for hours, it seems. The sun shines through green and Harry knows his clothes are almost sodden with perspiration, the humidity amongst the trees making it all the more unbearable.

When he slows, just barely, is when the figure appears.

“Harry.”

He inhales sharply, stopping short and almost tripping over something. He looks down, sees torn apart flesh and bone, fur sticking to it all. The carcass looks old, and the insects that infest it increase their speed as they try to avoid the new threat. His gaze roves over the contorted corpse of the deer, its dead eyes staring blankly ahead toward the figure, and then Harry finds himself gagging, scrambling away to bend over beside the largest trunk he can lean on, the bark scraping at his palms.

Once he can breathe, eyes squeezed shut against what he’s seen, the person walks forward. Harry looks up.

Niall’s smile is small and wry, his torso glistening with moisture. His hair is plastered to his head, darker with the wet, and his legs are splattered with mud. Harry hates him.

“You–” Harry gasps, eyes flicking to the dead deer. Niall sighs.

“Come on,” He tries to cajole, raising his arms in a placating gesture as he moves toward Harry, who’s still leaning heavily against the tree.

“No!” Harry cries out, pushing him away once his palms make contact with Harry’s shoulders. “Get away from me!”

“Harry,” Niall begins again, eyebrows and arms raised, “You’re panicking, mate.”

Harry whips around, stumbling away from the tree and running in the opposite direction. He hears a distant sigh and instead of nothing, this time he can make out the following footsteps of Niall behind him, patient and unworried.

It’s probably about five minutes back to the house, and Harry’s heart sinks when he realises it was purely the adrenaline, the naked hope running through his veins, that led him to believe he’d been on the run for much longer.

The front door is still open, and Harry rests his right hand on its side, unable to make the last few steps back into the rest of his life.

“Come on,” Niall murmurs gently. Then his hand is resting over Harry’s on the door, his other guiding Harry’s elbow through the entranceway and damning him all over again.

The house looks different. Drab. Unkempt. At least before, Harry could convince himself it was homely – like the two of them had burst into the place whilst the owners had rushed somewhere else, mugs of tea half-empty, cold by the time they’d arrived. The covers on the beds had been flung back. Windows had been open. There’d even been fresh produce in the fridge, though the two of them have been living off mostly dried and canned goods since the end of the first week.

Now Harry feels like the whole human race has abandoned them to this place, and he and Niall are the only two left. Harry would laugh, if he could. It truly is a monster movie.

He shrugs Niall’s grip off roughly, padding up the stairs and shutting himself in the bathroom. The click of the lock sends a shiver down his spine, and Harry peels off the disgusting clothes that cling to him and finally lets himself peek around the corner of his mind, witness the other side. It’d been easier than he’d thought to push it away.

It’s fuming – though more frustrated than angry. It prowls back and forth, and Harry senses a worry that’s not his own, a concern he doesn’t want to feel.

Snarling, Harry pushes the presence from him once more, limbs banging against the rim of the shower as he gets in before he shuts the glass door. The water is scalding when he turns it on, like Niall had time to warm up the water tank before Harry decided to rid himself of the forest grit. He bares his teeth at nothing, aggravated, as he grabs for the soap and cleans himself, refusing to indulge like he has previously. The lavender scent pushes into his grazes and Harry fumbles the soap, hissing at the sting.

Water washes over him in droves, one after the other, and then his shoulders are wracking with loud sobs, the shower masking only the softer beginnings and ends of his misery. He crouches down until his knees ache, and then he falls against the tiles, hair sticking to his face. Where the tears end and the cleaning begins is unclear, but Harry knows this is his future, now. Continuous days spent alone with only the company of a watcher, nights spent in agony, and full moons spent as something else entirely. Showers the only place where he can vent, undisturbed.

He wishes, so hard and so regretfully, for the presence of his mother. He bitterly remembers the many moments he took for granted – days where he begged off visits because he had an essay due, or a friend’s ‘imperative’ birthday. His friends, who liked him as well as he was around to make them feel good, are even an empty space inside him. Harry’s got no one, not even them, anymore. Just his gaoler.

“Right,” Niall announces from the bed when Harry opens the bathroom door some undeterminable time later, “This isn’t goin’ to go on any longer.”

Harry stares at him, eyes hard.

“Come downstairs,” Niall says, but it’s an order – Harry feels it, his bones quivering, “We’re talking.”

It seems wrong for daylight to be shining through the windows, speckles against the glass panes glinting as Harry treads downstairs, Niall right behind him. They sit at the dinner table, rickety as it is, and Niall brings out some half-stale bread and cheese that’s probably questionable. Harry finds he doesn’t much care, because it’s not like he can die, can he? Not like this.

Once one dry mouthful is down, Niall extends his hand, palm out for a shake. His eyes bore into Harry’s, and though his mouth is firm his expression seems, of all things, friendly. “Hi. I’m Niall Horan. Irish. Born thirteenth of September, 1993. I’ve got me Mam and me Dad, a brother I don’t much speak to, and the most adorable nephew to ever exist.” He waits for Harry to move, palm still outstretched. “Love golf, and a pint ‘round the pub on Sundays.” His mouth twists, a laugh in his tone. “Though I don’t get to do it all that much, do I?”

Harry swallows, wanting so desperately to shake Niall’s hand but unable to forget the blank eyes of the animal on the forest floor.

“I wish you were harder to read,” Niall chuckles, dropping his arm, “Least then I wouldn’t feel so damn bad for ya.”

“I don’t want your pity,” Harry replies on instinct, and Niall laughs.

“No,” he agrees, “I don’t imagine you do. But you should know that it wasn’t me who killed that deer, yeah? Sometimes we do, on the hunt. But,” He seems to hesitate, eyes flickering with something before returning to normal, something genial. “We don’t always get to do the humane thing. These things happen.”

“That’s sick,” Harry says, but his blood rushes at the thought, his brain revolting against such a feeling. He knows exactly what it is – the island inside him understands – and Harry hates it all so much he wonders whether he might just hope he gets caught in the wayward crossfire of something.

“Maybe.” Niall considers, and then he says nothing more, gazing evenly at Harry.

Harry picks at the bread on his plate, tearing it apart so the crumbs are like sand between his fingertips. He feels wrung out to dry, beaten against an old washboard until every inch of him has dried out, every vein exsanguinated. It’d be so easy to say nothing – to sit in silence like he has for every other one-sided conversation at this antique table. It’s so much harder to realise that for anything to change, then Harry needs to do the same – otherwise tomorrow will be like today, yesterday, the day before that. Otherwise lycanthropy will destroy him.

“M’Harry,” he mumbles, swallowing thickly. The bread breaks apart easily, hard and unappetising. Niall seems to have no problem with it. “February second, 1994. I’ve got a mum and a step-dad and my sister would kill me if she knew this is where I was.” He flicks his eyes to Niall, who remains unflappable.

“Just Harry?” Niall prods, and Harry’s gaze snaps up to glare at him.

“Don’t try it.” He warns, and Niall grins, holding his palms up.

“Alright, yeah. I get it. Worn out joke. You like _Harry Potter,_ though? Bit of a requirement ‘round these parts.”

Harry sighs.

“What’s going to happen?” he asks instead, and Niall’s mouth twists uncertainly.

“We’re goin’ to turn into wolves, mate,” he states frankly, and Harry feels like shaking him back and forth until his bones rattle, screaming _YOU DON’T THINK I KNOW?_ at the top of his lungs until Niall finally understands what he’s trying to figure out. “That’s the way of things now.”

“You’re infuriating.” Harry concludes, a bite to his tone that would be absent if he were still human.

The corner of Niall’s mouth quirks up, wry and tired, before he simply pushes back from the old table and stands. Niall takes his plate from him without asking, leaving Harry feeling bereft despite the fact he wasn’t eating anything, anyway. His hands feel empty, and he picks at a stray nail on his left thumb as a way of appeasing his disturbed sense of self.

There’s something satisfying to the peel of skin back from the cuticle, though. Harry’s never been one for unnecessary pain – has, in fact, been accused of being a wimp by both family and friends – but as his physical form gets pulled back, so does everything else until he’s left with nothing but the beat of his traitorous, lupine heart.

He sweats in bed that night, the moon ever closer to illuminating the dark of England’s summer night. His nails are bloody, his lips plump and red and stinging. Harry wonders if this is the tip of the iceberg of how he’s expected to feel – like maybe Remus Lupin was right when he said that the transformation is the worst pain imaginable. Harry guesses it’s why you’d go mad, at any rate – that kind of pain is sure to leave you out of your right mind, running purely on the instinct of this new species that’s crawled its way into your veins and taken shelter. Harry doesn’t want it. He never offered, he never said ‘come on in’ – the incredulous thought that lycanthropy is more like vampirism than fabricated mythology previously led Harry to believe crosses his mind.

The days leading up to the full moon don’t care much about offers or welcomes, however. They’re not as simple as Niall seems to think this whole mess is. Harry’s sweats get worse. He feels like he’s going through a second growth spurt with the way his bones and muscles are so tender and sore. Every day feels like a battle just to get out of bed, his very essence tired. He can barely keep anything down, the cramping in his stomach is so bad.

The morning of the 27th is when things get frightening; well, more frightening than previous, which is saying a lot given Harry’s experiences so far.

He’s trembling as he clings desperately to the bannister, holding himself up with sheer determination. His legs feel weak and unused, even though he was walking around perfectly fine yesterday, albeit with a bit of pain.

Once he reaches the ground floor, his breath is coming in harsh pants and sweat is wetting the hair at his temples. With every moment that he stands there, not moving, he realises that this is probably the end of him. The virus has gone wrong, somehow – like a fault in its DNA as it merged with Harry’s left the both of them ill; the virus hasn’t got a healthy human host anymore, and Harry hasn’t got a cure for this lunacy, as ironic as it is.

Reassessing, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to make it past the bannister – doesn’t even think he’d even be able to crawl if he ended up sprawled on the floor. His sister used to make jokes about his clumsiness, Harry remembers wryly – if only she could see him now.

The image of her grinning face, her teasing pinch to his side, has his eyes wandering the hallway, looking for a way to make things better.

A glint of brass has him lunging forward, the front door so plainly in sight and the only thing Harry can think of – _I have to get home. I have to find Gem._

“ _Fuck._ ”

Harry groans, curling up as his back screams in pain. He’d fallen right down as soon as his hands left wood, and the solid landing on his shoulders is excruciating. He knows Niall’s there – heard his curse – but he can’t even look at him, eyes scrunched up and burning with the suddenly blinding light.

“Jesus, Harry.” Harry feels hands on him – cool, a little clammy – and they tug, they pull, until Harry’s leaning into a warmer body, absolutely exhausted. “Fuckin’ hell, what happened to you?”

Harry presses his damp forehead into Niall’s flannel-covered shoulder, biting his lip as his stomach roils with the movement of Niall heaving him up, stumbling a little on his left leg.

Then, like no time has passed at all, Niall drops him onto the old sofa, wincing as Harry yells out gibberish, overcome with pain. Harry feels his insides moving, feels his skin crawling, and hopes he passes out soon enough – because right now, he’d give anything not to feel a damn thing.

“–got to get over here, man,” Niall’s saying, and Harry swings his head, what’s left of his curls sticking to the back of his neck, the sides of his face. “He’s proper shifting.”

Harry swallows thickly, gasping as a white-hot sting pierces through his abdomen, making him hunch over himself, curling up on the couch as he closes his eyes on Niall’s stricken face.

“–not ‘til tonight, but it doesn’t seem to matter, does it? Get the fuck over here.”

 _Breathe,_ Harry tells himself, inhaling sharply. _Slow. In and out. In and out. All those yoga classes had to be good for something._

“Harry–” _Inhale. Exhale._ “Haz–!”

He’s shocked out of it, a hand slamming down on his shoulder and making him cry out. “ _Harry!_ Look at me, mate, c’mon–”

There’s something that drowns Niall out; a sharp, rhythmic noise, “Harry, mate.”

 _I’m sobbing,_ Harry realises, abruptly feeling the tickle of tears down his cheeks, the slide of them onto his neck. _I’m actually going loony._

“How long has this gone on?” Niall’s asking him, shaking his shoulders gently. Harry buries his face into the arm of the sofa, smelling cigarette smoke and jasmine wood, a musky undertone to it all. Maybe a hint of vanilla bean, if he focuses hard enough.

Niall says some other things – nothing Harry can respond to, because it feels like his voice has left him, caught up in his swollen throat. The sobs continue, the stabbing pain in his spine carries on. His stomach continues to squirm, like it wants to expel everything in it but there’s simply nothing there. _Which would be just about true,_ Harry muses in a sudden burst of clarity as he hears a distant bang.

He opens his eyes through a squint, looking up to see someone lither than Niall, his arms covered in ink. He’s got dark hair, an angular face. His head turns to Harry and he’s closing his eyes again, crying out as the pain increases threefold.

“He came down the stairs, fell. I found him in the hallway – I don’t know how long he’d been there, but he was sweating up a storm, groaning. I’m not sure he can hear us. He hasn’t been answerin’ my questions.” Niall explains, and Harry can feel the man come closer, kneel down by Harry’s side.

There are a few minutes where the only sound in the room seems to be Harry’s whimpering; because the pain is still there, ever present and intrusive. He’s about to open his mouth and ask for water, or painkillers – just _something_ to ease this – but then the man pushes a slim hand into Harry’s curls, and it’s like the pain retreats, scared of this new person. It’s still there, pulling on Harry’s innards; but not harshly. He can push it away.

He’s breathing heavily – still feeling the shock of such intense pain – when he opens his eyes.

“I thought you were taking care of it.” The new man says as Harry’s gaze focuses in on the stark line of his jaw; counting the pricks of stubble that lie there. His hair is messy, slightly curled. His voice is hard, like he’s angry. Harry’s breath hitches, the pain returning with an intensity he can’t quite process.

“It was fine– well, he didn’t say anything, Zayn. How was I supposed to–”

The man – Zayn, this is _Zayn_ – snarls, turning back to Harry so quickly that Harry feels like his eyes must be deceiving him. The colours are so bright, and there’s about three or four of Zayn in front of him, the pain making things foggy.

“Harry,” he says, and Harry’s shoulders drop, his chest going tight at the address. Zayn’s voice is softer now, but there’s an edge to it that Harry can’t quite identify. Zayn’s eyes are piercing, the deep, dark brown of them almost hypnotising. His face is entirely too symmetrical, and his lashes flutter with every blink. If Harry didn’t know better, he’d say he was hallucinating with the pain. “Where’s it hurting?” He asks, though it doesn’t feel like a question so much as a demand.

He still can’t muster up speech, so instead he curls the fingers of his left hand, twisting his t-shirt right above his belly button to articulate _here. Right here. All the way through to my spine._

Zayn’s hand is still in Harry’s wet hair, his fingertips rubbing into his scalp. His right hand moves slowly to cover Harry’s, to stop its twisting. Harry looks up, eyes half-lidded and a question on his lips, when Zayn’s face goes from frighteningly neutral to dark in a second as he rips his hands from Harry. Harry can’t help but cry out, the pain barrelling into him as he jolts, squirming on the sofa now damp with his copious sweat.

Zayn curses, spitting and furious. Harry doesn’t see it, but he can imagine Zayn whirling around to glare at Niall, beautiful face ugly in its rage.

“Why the fuck didn’t you say anything?” He grits out as Harry cries as silently as he can, hiccoughing every few seconds. It’s getting harder to breathe.

“What?” Niall snaps, “What are you on about?”

“Stomach cramps?” spits Zayn, “Cold sweats? This has to have been going on for longer than this morning.”

“Zayn,” Now Niall just sounds confused, his tone coloured with a slight hint of wariness, “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I told you,” Zayn continues, as if Niall hasn’t said anything at all, “I told you they were rare, that they follow intense body changes. Cramping. No appetite. Lack of sleep. Vomiting.” There’s a pause, where Harry imagines Niall covering his mouth in horror. He wants to laugh, but it just comes out as a sob. “Tell me it hasn’t been happening.”

“Zayn–”

“Tell me, Niall!” Zayn exclaims. It’s demanding, even if the volume hasn’t quite reached a yell.

“I can’t,” replies Niall, and he sounds absolutely miserable, “Zayn, I’m so sorry–”

“A fucking _omega._ ” Zayn announces, and Harry’s blood runs cold for no reason, because he doesn’t even know what that means. Maybe it’s the way Zayn said it – the fury in his tone, the slight edge to it that Harry would call fear.

“I’m–” Harry croaks out, lids fluttering open to see Zayn whip his head to him, crouching down in the next beat, hands coming out only for Zayn to stop himself. “I’m sorry.” Harry whispers, and tears leave his eyes anew, rolling painfully slow down his clammy cheeks.

Zayn’s sharp jaw clenches, his expression twisting until it clears. He’s neutral again, impossible to read. Harry lifts his right arm up, shameful of its shaking but unwilling to stop. Zayn stares at it, and it’s only when the tips of Harry’s fingers brush against his cheekbone that his hand flies up to grab Harry’s wrist, grip unrelenting, grinding Harry’s bones together without any kind of effort.

“Please,” Harry begs him, arm going limp in the brutal hold, “Just do it quick, please.”

“We’re not going to kill you,” Zayn tells him, catching on fast – or maybe Harry’s mind is sluggish, slow with this whole ordeal. Either way, Zayn’s face hasn’t changed, his tone more matter-of-fact than anything. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Like a cresting wave, the pain rushes back in with unnatural force, making Harry writhe on the sofa, Zayn’s fingers circling his wrist doggedly, sure to form bruises.

“Zayn,” Niall warns him – but he doesn’t let go, bringing his right arm up until he has Harry’s jaw in his hand, ripping it toward him and glaring at Harry with such hate that he cringes back against the cushions, whimpering again. “Zayn, _enough._ ”

“Shift.” Zayn orders, and Harry feels his skin break out into another sweat, his heart beat double-time in his fragile human chest. He stares at Zayn helplessly, panting. “I won’t ask you again,” says Zayn, and the feeling returns to Harry’s legs – only to be replaced by something strange; like he’s being stretched thin, his skin breaking apart. “ _Shift._ ”

Harry screams as Zayn lets go of his wrist, muscles spasming uncontrollably, his skin splitting at the seams. His scream is long and arduous, and it morphs into something guttural as he falls from the sofa.

“Holy _shite,_ Zayn–”

“Get Louis.”

“But, he’ll be wild–”

“I can handle him. _Get Louis._ ”

His stomach flips, and then suddenly torture erupts inside him. He feels like his bones are breaking, his organs twisting themselves up into knots and rupturing. He feels like his very veins are tangling, tied together forever. Harry’s not quite sure what’s happening, but there’s a part of him that knows; a part of him that hollers in delight, that runs into every wall in his mind that he erected. It bursts through, howling with triumph, as Harry goes under and under and under…

 

***

 

The forest moves around him, a blur of green and blue and black. He feels the wind through his hair; the way the cool air brushes his skin making him shiver, shake, sneeze a little.

A warm body bumps into his side, almost making him stumble over his feet. He turns his head to the right, sees orange eyes staring back–

 

***

 

There’s iron in his mouth; and the squelch of something soft between his teeth makes his blood go hot, his ears take notice. A deep satisfaction imbues his senses, settling comfortable and warm in his lungs and beating confidently through his chest. He bites down again, the iron spreading to the back of his throat as he swallows greedily, lifting his head and letting the softness break apart and slide down into his stomach.

He huffs, content.

 

***

 

–on his back in the dirt, wriggling so he can get out from under the pressure on his chest, two points that ache the smallest amount, like pinpricks of pain.

Nothing works, not even his attempts to kick at the force. He drops his head, looks at the thing above him. It’s huge – bigger than he is in every way – and black, the orange gaze piercing into him.

He wriggles again, but this time his opponent leans forward in the time it takes for him to try to kick out again, head thrown back. Then his neck is in its hold, its teeth sharp and dangerous against his jugular. There’s no way to escape it, not unless he wants to injure himself.

Stopping his movement, waiting for any kind of action – the two of them lie there, covered in dust and dirt and mud, until he slowly relaxes, the pressure on his artery lessening only slightly as he stops wriggling, stops trying to do anything at all.

Like a wave, calmness comes over him. He lets out a long breath, feels the threat of teeth but relishes in it, remembers how it felt on the back of his neck, the scar it left behind.

He remembers this from before, and he concedes.

 

***

 

Harry drank too much last night. Too much by far.

He groans, shifting on the bed and feeling the deep-seated ache in his very being – like the mere cells that comprise his bones are tired and sore and wanting to go back to sleep. But he’s awake now, and the pain won’t leave him even in his groggy state. His head pounds, his teeth feel too big for his mouth, and his nose is blocked. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say he were poorly, fighting off the latest cold from Grimmy or any one of those.

“You’re awake,” a voice says, soft and Northern, “Good.”

Blinking open his eyes, Harry manages a few seconds of bleary silence before he realises he did not, in fact, drink too much last night. And that the nightmare of being kidnapped and held hostage and feeling his bones break is very real.

“Had to wash you,” the voice declares, and Harry sits up on an elbow as his eyes dart to its source, the tattooed man – _Zayn,_ his mind whispers fearfully – dropping a wet flannel into a rusted metal bucket. He’s dressed in a white t-shirt and loose grey joggers. Harry looks down at himself, sees the glistening on his arms of water, feels the wetness of the hair on his legs. His nails are dirty still, brown stuck underneath what used to be white. He’s wearing threadbare boxers, and that’s all; his tattoos so starkly on display making him feel shy. “You’ll need a shower, though. There’s only so much I can do.”

Harry lifts his gaze to him, sees the raised eyebrows, and flushes a dark pink. He’s hot, all of a sudden – even though it must be just past dawn, and he’s almost naked.

He’s about to open his mouth, ask what happened – but it’s like Zayn can read his mind, because he’s talking as if Harry had asked just that, the question burning on the edge of his tongue despite being answered.

“First moon came early,” explains Zayn. He rises from his seat – a short, metal stool that he scrapes across the old floorboards to the corner it must reside. Harry winces, the sound grating on his senses and making his teeth sting. “You went wild.”

“Wild?” Harry echoes, and his voice sounds like it’s been dragged through gravel, like he hasn’t spoken in a month.

“It happens when you fight against yourself,” Zayn says. He turns to look at Harry more fully, his eyes dark and mesmerising. Harry shifts on the bed.

“Against myself?” He repeats, like a parrot who has an endless phrase book.

Zayn says nothing, then. Instead, he crosses his arms five or so feet from Harry, and waits.

“I…” There’s nothing to say, though – nothing that will shed light on what’s happened because Zayn might be explaining, but it’s not making sense. How can it, when Harry blacked out and woke up the same, but different? How can it, when he’s not even a _person_ anymore? He’s not a person with human thoughts and human emotions. He’s ruled by the moon and the pull it has on his blood – and that makes him anything but human.

“You ate a few rabbits, so I can’t imagine you’re hungry,” Zayn presumes, and Harry’s gaze snaps to him. His mouth drops open – _rabbits?_ “But Louis will make breakfast soon. You should join us.”

Images flash through his mind – something squirming in his mouth, the way it stopped when he bit down with finality. The hunger sated temporarily, the joy he felt as his stomach filled.

_Jesus…_

It rushes back to him now – three others around him, the black wolf sticking close and familiar; the thrill of the hunt, the curiosity of this new pack, the freedom of the forest.

Submitting.

“That wasn’t me,” Harry rasps, squeezing his eyes shut in the hopes it’ll rid him of the way it felt to swallow blood and skin and fur, “ _No._ ”

“It was you,” Zayn confirms calmly, uncrossing his arms.

“No!” Harry shouts, scrambling off the bed. His limbs feel clumsy, too big for his body. _Not like four legs._ He shoots down the errant thought quickly, realisations accosting him from every which way and making his heart beat frantic and with fervour. “I– I– I didn’t kill anything, I don’t… I don’t remember.” He swallows thickly, and Zayn just stands there, as if Harry’s whole life hasn’t been destroyed. “That’s not… that wasn’t me, alright? I don’t do that. I _can’t_ do that.”

“You can,” Zayn replies simply, no expression on his face, “And you did.”

“How can you just stand there,” Harry blurts out, gesturing wildly as his voice begins to tremble, “and act like this is perfectly normal?” Harry narrows his eyes, ignoring the tears, “ _You_ did this to me. You forced this on me. I didn’t choose this – who would choose this?” He knows he sounds hysterical – that his pitch is getting higher and higher and his chest can barely expand enough for him to breathe, let alone speak.

“It _is_ a choice,” Zayn says, and Harry tries not to flinch at his tone, confident and assuming, “By walking into the woods, you made it.”

“I didn’t know what choice I was making!” Harry yells, angry and ignoring the flash of Zayn’s eyes. “It’s not a choice if I didn’t know it existed!”

“Alrigh’?”

Harry swings his head to the open doorway, chest heaving, to see a man only slightly shorter than Zayn. He’s hovering, as if he’d been there a few minutes, waiting to interject.

“What?” Zayn snaps, and the man raises his eyebrows.

“Easy, mate. Give him a moment, yeah? Boy just woke up after his first shift. I know it’s been a while, but I’m sure you can remember what that felt like if you think hard enough.”

Zayn glares at him, turning to push past and leaving Harry alone in the room, tears nearly falling. Everything feels like too much, and he just wants to go home – to his bed, to his family. Even to his fucking friends, who he hasn’t seen in some millennia.

“Forget about him,” the man says, waving a hand, “Food’s downstairs,” and goes.

The mere idea of food is too much for Harry to take, and it’s with a speed he didn’t know he possessed that he gets to the toilet bowl in time, hunched over and heaving, squeezing his eyes so tightly he’s seeing kaleidoscopic blurs of colour behind his lids. He doesn’t want to look at what he’s just expelled from his body – Zayn was lying; Harry’s never eaten a rabbit in his life, and he’s not about to start now.

Blindly he pushes down on the flush and wipes his mouth in the same breath, ignoring the feel of his muscles – fresh, like he just got out of a warm shower and stretched straight after – as he stands in front of the basin. He lets his hands grip the sides of the porcelain and stares at the scratches around his knuckles, the bruising of his right thumb that looks like it’s fading before his very eyes. He grabs for the soap near his left hand, scraping his nails into it and watching the white push out the dirt like he’s reversing everything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours.

 _It’s not that simple,_ he tells himself angrily as he leans down to pull in a mouthful of water, swishing it around to get rid of that _taste._ He might know it, but Harry doesn’t want to think too deeply about what’s going to happen. If he had his way, he’d leave this place and report it to the police; but not before sprinting back home, running for hours as fast as his spindly legs would carry him. His mum would open the door, a polite but tired smile on her face. Her hair would be curlier than usual, and she’d have bags under her eyes, maybe. Harry would let her register it was him, and then he’d barrel into her, tears soaking her collar and words tumbling out of his mouth in no order at all. Just love, apologies, and pure relief.

The soap drops back into the dish carved out of off-white porcelain. Then the heat finally kicks in, and Harry lets the scalding temperature distract him before he shuts it off, head hanging low to avoid the mirror. He wipes his palms on the boxers that aren’t his and walks back into the bedroom.

Someone’s left a pile of folded clothes next to the bed, but the idea of them touching his skin has the hair on the back of Harry’s neck standing on end, a wave of unease washing over him like snow softly falling on shoulders in early December. Its slow appearance makes it more disturbing.

He rummages through the closet instead, grabbing a t-shirt that looks too big to be anyone else’s, and a pair of joggers that stop at his ankles. They’ll have to do until he can leave this place, get back to civilisation.

The clothes – choices _he_ made – feel like armour in this lion’s den. Harry snorts. _More like wolf den,_ he thinks before he realises the weight of his words. His blood runs especially hot, and suddenly he wants to rip everything off and run into the surrounds, cover himself in the dirt and the mire and fade into the forest like he was born within its very roots.

His legs lead him downstairs instead, like subconsciously they associate the forest with the rest of them. Like Harry has a homing beacon glued to three strangers.

Ignoring the clench of his stomach, he exhales shakily at the base of the stairs. Then he remembers crashing into the ground, the twist of his spine and the sting of his nails in his palms. His hands come up – but his palms are clean now, and there are no crescent moon scars to indicate what took place. Everything is a phantom, it seems – a ghost that trails its touch over Harry’s skin, all over and invasive and without permission. The ghost slips through the cracks – those little scratches, the fading bruises – and it buries itself inside him, making him feel emotions he doesn’t want to feel, telling Harry that nothing bad happened. How could it? His skin’s free of imperfection, his body feels awake and alive and all those things people describe when the adrenalin hits.

He whips his arm up, feels the marred skin at the nape of his neck with persistent fingers, and swallows back the tears.

He’s not going insane. That happened, and so did last night. He’s not broken in the ways that matter.

He’s been able to hear the murmur of voices in the kitchen to his left for a little while, but he’s been ignoring the words in stubbornness. They filter through now, though – almost like his sudden strength deemed him stable enough to listen.

“–not on, mate. Just act bloody normal.” The man from before – probably Louis, if Harry’s memory serves him correctly.

“Louis–” Zayn confirms this for him, and his tone makes Harry’s lips twist in confusion.

“Sometimes I wonder who put you in charge, Zayner.”

“That’s not fair, Lou,” That’s Niall, sighing tiredly. There’s the clink of metal on wood, and Harry knows he’s just put down his mug of tea. “Don’t be like this now.”

Zayn’s silent. More than anything right now, Harry realises, he wants to hear him speak again.

 _Are you daft?_ He questions himself, hovering still. _Are you a bloody idiot?_

“Yeah, whatever,” says Louis, snapping Harry out of it. Harry peers his head around in time to see Louis flippantly wave the other two off with one hand and lift a ceramic mug to his lips with the other.

“Harry!” Niall greets him, smiling easily as he steps off from leaning against the counter with his ankles crossed.

Zayn is still staring at Louis without expression as the latter twists in his chair to greet Harry. “Took you long enough. The eggs are cold.”

Harry darts his eyes to the plate beside Louis, with burnt eggs on what looks closer to bread than toast, and ignores the swelling feeling at the back of his throat that threatens to let loose.

“I’m not hungry,” states Harry, wondering where he can place himself – sitting down feels like he’s too much on display, and standing anywhere near the counter puts him close to Zayn, whose clenched jaw is making Harry nervous.

 _“A fucking_ omega.”

The memory makes him flinch and so he misses the look Niall shoots Zayn in response, too busy trying to push away the shame that curls in his sternum, like a cat trying to escape the cold of the night air it’s been abandoned in.

There’s silence in the kitchen as Harry takes a seat, pretending not to notice the tremor in his hands as he picks up the glass of water by his cold plate. He gulps down mouthfuls of the liquid, not letting himself linger too long on the tarnished metallic edge to it.

“You get used to the way water doesn’t much taste like water at all,” Louis tells him matter-of-factly, snorting towards the end as a shiver reverberates through Harry’s chest, his bones rattling.

“Here,” Niall says, and Harry turns his head to see him shrugging off his navy hoodie. It gets bunched up in his hands before he thrusts it out in Harry’s direction, “I’ll be fine.”

“What?” Harry asks, wondering why Niall is offering him a hoodie and why it feels like the three of them seem to be reading his mind before the thought even comes to him.

“You’re cold. S’fine, lad.”

“Niall,” Zayn cautions, and it’s that address that makes Harry swallow, before he stands and accepts the offering, pulling the hoodie on whilst everyone seems to be watching. He sits himself back down, and then there’s a pause.

“Jesus Christ – an omega rocks up and the two of you don’t know how to act human.”

“We’re not human.” Zayn reminds him; as if Harry needed any reminding at all with the way he can smell the cracked egg shells in the bin by the corner.

“You said that–” Harry cuts himself off and swallows again, averting his eyes from Zayn’s dark, pointed gaze and looking to the only person he even remotely knows – Niall. “Omega.”

Niall clears his throat, bringing a hand up to rub at the nape of his neck. “It’s like I told you.”

“You didn’t–” Harry tries to argue, but Niall barrels on as Louis looks between them, Zayn’s piercing eyes still on Harry and making him uncomfortable.

“It’s the pack structure, mate. Not that you’re, like, on the bottom–” Harry glimpses Louis roll his eyes whilst Niall stumbles through this, a tinge of something like awe in his voice. Harry would say it was respect at a stretch – but how can they respect him when he’s been treated like he has? Forbidden from leaving the premises? Told barely anything, and forced to shift into an animal by the one person who could probably explain this better than anyone else?

An ugly churning starts up in Harry’s belly, and he finds his hands clenching into fists without his permission as he stares Niall down, silently demanding he explain himself.

“Omegas are rare,” Louis takes over, and Niall lets out a long breath, chuckling to himself, “Well, we think they are.”

“It’d be nice,” starts Harry, the ugly churning building into proper frustration. He’d be hard-pressed to say he was angry, as he doesn’t tend to get there easily – but the lack of information has quickly become tiresome, “If we could all stop talking in riddles for once.”

“Sorry,” Niall apologises sheepishly, but a glance from Zayn has him clearing his throat again, “I just– I’m stumped, I’ll be honest.” The air changes, then – Harry feels it in the hairs on his forearms, the way his heartbeat starts to quicken without rhyme or reason. Niall’s eyes lock with Harry’s, and the blue suddenly feels icy; not the summer sky Harry’s been imagining every time he was on the receiving end of a thoughtful glance the past month. “Never met one of you before.”

“One of me?” Harry echoes. The phrase resounds in his head, bumping against his skull like they’re in a pinball machine. He’s already been cast out, ostracised. He’s already different – more different than the rest of them.

It’s not like this could’ve been easy – he couldn’t have been turned into a werewolf by someone with a grin on their face and the promise that everything would be alright, could he? He couldn’t have been a beta, like he assumes Niall and Louis to be? He couldn’t have just stayed at the bed and breakfast instead of going for a hike out in the English wilderness? There’s a sickness inside him that swirls in his intestines, and Harry wants it all to go away – he doesn’t want this. He never asked for this.

“There was never any point explainin’ it to ya,” Niall still sounds in awe, like he’s just seen an otherworldly phenomenon, “It’s not somethin’ you can articulate.”

Harry thinks about the way that foreign _thing_ tore his body apart and took its place, only to piece him back together all wrong at the break of dawn.

_Indescribable._

“What does it mean?” He asks the room, hoping no one picks up on the tremble in his voice.

“It’s an honour,” Zayn speaks up. Harry turns to look at him, the tears welling up in his eyes a natural response, for some reason. There’s a war inside him that’s raging, and he doesn’t have a say in who wins, or even in who’s participating. “You wouldn’t have this if you weren’t a werewolf.”

“And I’m supposed to be grateful?” Harry snaps, bringing a hand up to tug on his hair in agitation, the scar burning behind the shorter strands – like it knows he just spoke to Zayn that way, and it’s not happy.

“You don’t have to be anything,” Zayn returns without expression, Niall shifting closer to him, “I’m not asking you for anything.”

“Good.” Harry declares, standing up and trying not to wince at the scrape of his wooden chair on the floor boards, harsh sounds still grating him, “Guess I’ll leave, then.”

“Alright!” Louis exclaims, sitting up from his slouch and raising his eyebrows meaningfully. “I’d say that’s enough, wouldn’t you? Niall?”

“Well–”

“No,” Harry interrupts, glaring at the slight man, “I don’t think so. I’ve been kept here a month against my will, barely any explanation, and I’m expected to just roll with it?” Harry twists his head to glower at Zayn, his annoyance morphing into something hot and molten inside him, the answering island making everything worse.

 _The island is Zayn,_ he reminds himself. _You’re just making him angry._

_I don’t care._

“None of you are human anymore,” It’s cruel, really, but Harry’s been more patient than anyone should be expected to be, so he feels he’s earned this a little, “You left that behind a long time ago, it seems.”

“You don’t know a thing about us,” Zayn replies, and his voice is hard, his eyes narrowed, “I–”

“Then tell me!” Harry yells, flinging his arms out in exasperation. “I don’t see the point to any of this!”

“Harry,” Niall begins, moving closer a step and looking wary, “You’ve barely processed lycanthropy as it is.”

“And whose fault is that?” Harry lashes out, bringing a hand up to run through his curly hair, fingers getting caught in the tangles. “How am I meant to _process_ when I’m not being told anything?”

“Enough.” Zayn orders, striding forward until he takes Harry’s right elbow in his fierce grip, making the skin at the joint burn like a phantom pain. “This is bigger than you. The pack is bigger than you. What you do affects all of us.”

“Seeing my family again won’t do a thing to you.” Harry grits out, feeling Zayn’s frustrated exhales on his cheeks. They’re so close that Harry can see the mole in Zayn’s left eye – he can see the long lashes that frame both of them, the elegant slope to Zayn’s nose fascinating up close. His stubble accentuates his strong brow, and everything about his face is a contrast – the fine features paired with the rugged, unkempt look.

“Are you thinking at all?” Harry whips his head to look at Louis, who’s now stood with his arms crossed and arse perched on the table. “Because if you didn’t realise already, you’re a liability this young.”

“I’m not a child.” Harry reminds him, swallowing back the nastier retort.

“Your wolf is,” Louis points out, staring Harry down, “You go out there to the big city, barely turned, and you’ll hurt someone. You’ll hurt your family. Is that what you want?”

Harry shifts his jaw mulishly, looking past Louis to the wooden wall behind him, catching the dust floating through the air as the sun shines through the window.

“If you hurt someone, people will come looking for you,” explains Niall, soft with understanding, “They’ll look for us.”

There’s a lump in Harry’s throat – threatening, waiting in the wings.

“You’re all still here.” He croaks through the lump, chest tightening, “Have any of you gone back?”

He sweeps his eyes around the room; Louis’s lips purse, Niall’s brows furrow, and finally – Zayn has no expression on his face, no tell. He’s looking at Harry like it doesn’t even matter, like the thought of going back hadn’t ever occurred to him.

Something in him crumbles and Harry feels the tears slide down his face as the room zones out, as his stomach cramps up and he bends over, groaning at the sharpness there, like a knife just slid right in and made Harry’s abdomen its new home.

He pushes everything away; feels the drag of Zayn’s palm on his forearm before he escapes the room, stumbling until he gets to the bannister. There are exclamations from the kitchen, but Harry just pulls himself up the stairs and leaves them behind, managing to make his way to the bed he’s claimed as his own and bury his face in the pillow that’s not his, inhaling saffron in between his sobs and wishing for normalcy.

Between one jerky inhale and the next, he somehow falls asleep – because when he next lifts his eyelids the sun is beaming soft and warm through the window, indicating late afternoon. Harry rubs at his eyes, painfully scraping away the crusty sleep and stubbornly ignoring the growl of his stomach.

He stares at the ceiling despondently, the peeling paint making for an accurate representation of his flayed mental state.

He’s stuck here – for the foreseeable future, and maybe for the rest of his life. He’s stuck in what would’ve been a pleasant situation without the new supernatural disease running through his veins, and the strangers forbidding him from leaving.

Turning over, his gaze falls on the book splayed on the side table, words facing down into the wood, spine worn. Harry hasn’t touched it, not since this room became his. He knows – deep down, he knows – whose room this was. He doesn’t think about it.

Sitting up, the book comes with him, and the page it opens on is innocuous. But then Harry sharpens his stare, and familiar and surprising words come into focus.

> **PUCK**

> > Captain of our fairy band,  
>  Helena is here at hand;  
>  And the youth, mistook by me,  
>  Pleading for a lover's fee.  
>  Shall we their fond pageant see?  
>  Lord, what fools these mortals be!

“ _Shakespeare._ ” Harry breathes, letting his fingers glide over the words, feeling the rough edges of the pages and wondering. There’s some irony here – that Zayn would read about fairies and the like when he’s a mythical creature himself. Maybe that’s the reason – or maybe Zayn just likes Shakespeare. Maybe he’s bored out of his mind in this house out in the woods.

The words remind Harry, however, that he’s not here to be toyed with. Not like the Athenians in this play, where Puck has mucked it all up for them but then simply laughs at the mayhem. Harry’s not Athenian, and Zayn isn’t Puck. Harry’s not here to be made a fool of.

Harry’s in control of his destiny. He’d been letting people call the shots for him before, because he hadn’t known much. He still doesn’t know much – but going home now would mean knowing even less. His family would have no idea. Harry’s not stupid, even if it seems like Louis thinks he is.

Wouldn’t it be better to bide his time here? To find out everything he needs to know and then go home?

The book gets placed back on the bedside table, Harry’s mind whirring.

Laughter peaks outside. Harry turns, getting up onto his knees to look out the window behind the wooden headboard.

The three of them are shirtless, wrestling in the fading sunlight. Niall’s shoulders are red, but he doesn’t seem to care – instead, he barrels into Louis, whose twist away wasn’t quite successful enough. He’s wily, though, and manages to slip out from underneath Niall on the ground, kneeing him in the sternum in the process. Niall pants heavily sprawled out as he is, grin on his face.

Zayn offers a hand, and Harry’s eyes travel over his inked collarbones, the wings on his chest. His muscles clench as he pulls Niall up, and then he’s got a hand on the side of Niall’s face, the other resting on his collarbone. Niall’s laughing, nodding, pushing away Zayn’s hands playfully and then dragging him in by his arm, lifting Zayn onto his sunburnt shoulders.

The laughter sounds again, and Harry’s eyes flick to Zayn’s face to see his eyes scrunched up, his tongue pushing against his teeth as he tries to wriggle his arms out from under Niall’s one-handed grip. The sun through the window is making Harry feel light and warm.

Harry lets his eyes dart away and startles when he sees Louis looking up at the second floor. He can’t possibly glimpse Harry’s face through the glare of sun on glass, but Harry drops back down onto the bed anyway, heart racing at being caught.

He wasn’t doing anything wrong, but his skin feels all tight regardless, like he’s just been scolded and he’s sitting in his room sulking about it.

He doesn’t go down for dinner. Instead he reads _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ for a little while, dog-earing the pages out of spite. Zayn doesn’t seem like he’d appreciate it.

Waking up the next day, however, has Harry feeling off rather than vindictively satisfied.

“Morning!” A new stranger greets him in the hallway as he drags his feet to the kitchen. The brown-haired man has a handsomely bearded but pleasant face with a crinkly-eyed smile. He feels likeable, and Harry bites back a polite reply, choosing instead to stay silent.

The man’s smile falters only slightly, but he continues nevertheless. “I’m Liam. Just here to drop off some groceries.”

“Our own little delivery boy,” Louis pipes up from behind, and then he’s walking past them and clapping Liam on the shoulder on his way to the kitchen table, “Oh, the things I’d do to _you._ ”

“I’m fine, actually,” Liam replies, like this is commonplace, “Sophia’s got me covered.”

“Semantics!” Louis shoots back over a shoulder, dragging out one of the kitchen chairs to take a seat. Niall’s at the helm this time, muscular back facing the rest of the room as he flits between frypans. The absence of Zayn has Harry’s shoulders dropping, the headache threatening his frontal lobe receding. He can’t help but wonder whether it’s all these new emotions clouding up his white matter, or whether he’s never used his brain so much in all his life. It’s like learning to ride a bike, except he’s not had any kind of training wheels along the way.

Harry considers himself good with people, generally. Mostly they’re easy to read, and he’s talented at hiding his own thoughts when it matters. Gemma calls it his P.R. voice, but Harry thinks it’s just plain polite.

Navigating werewolves has never been part of this equation, however. He never accounted for people being able to smell the sweat at his nape when he’s talking absolute shit with a dimpled smile on his face. How could twenty-twenty vision work in his favour when even the slightest twitch is catalogued?

The worst of it all is that piece of thread at the back of his mind, fluttering as all his thoughts pass by it. They tangle together like the thinnest hair imaginable, knotting right up until Harry’s broadcasting his fears to three strangers as if he’s shouting over the P.A. system at Wembley Stadium, every screen transcribing his words. There’s no mistaking it, and the way Louis eyes him as he sits at the kitchen table has Harry curling in on himself a bit, hoping the despair that spreads through every thought isn’t so noticeable. He can’t possibly be taken seriously if they think he’s moping around the place like a toddler forbidden from having sweets. He’s got to be cautious and wait until the next full moon, convince them he’s alright to leave.

It’s either that, or he’ll have to get a message to Gemma somehow. Steal a mobile, maybe even sneak into an internet café – if he can find one.

Pushing away the rush of hopelessness at that actuality, Harry tunes back in to Liam’s amiable rambling for a modicum of distraction.

“–know what Zayn’s got for me this time?” Liam’s asking as Niall plonks down a plate heavy with breakfast food in front of him. Liam picks up the porcelain and shovels his beans onto Louis’ without comment.

“Think it’s another of Safaa,” answers Niall, placing the same meal in front of Harry. He’d never indulge in a full English normally, but Harry’d smelt the greasy sausages from his bed, and his stomach wouldn’t stop growling until he’d relented to leaving such comfortable confines. “He needs some new material.”

“Hmm,” Liam hums through a mouthful of egg. He swallows noisily, gulping down some tea before he continues, “I wouldn’t say so. Buyers are desperate, I told you that.”

“Maybe we can get some better digs then, yeah?” Louis chimes in, hair a bit of a mess now that Harry’s taken notice. “Wouldn’t mind a footy goal or summat.”

“You broke the last one,” Liam tells him, in a tone that lets Harry know this is a conversation they’ve had before, probably many times, “What’s to say you won’t do the same with this one?”

Louis perks up like he’s caught the scent of prey. The errant thought leaves a sour taste in Harry’s mouth – but that might just be the fact he hasn’t cleaned his teeth yet this morning.

“So you’ve bought it, then?” He asks, and then a smirk takes over his face. “Excellent. Zayn owes me a match.”

Liam shoots a look at Harry out of the corner of his eyes, one that would be impossible to miss. Sometimes Harry wishes he were as invisible as the others often make him feel, because it seems Liam’s terribly easy to read and Harry doesn’t much like the hesitance he sees in his brown eyes.

“I’m sure he does.” Niall placates Louis, clapping him on the shoulder before his palm drags across their length and stops at the nape of Louis’ neck, squeezing in reassurance. “But go easy, yeah? I don’t fancy Zayn’s disapproving dad eyebrows more than you do.”

Louis snorts, mumbling something that’s not exactly words, but seems to take on the same tone as “Thanks, Mum.”

“Niall,” Liam announces, but not demanding enough for Harry’s eyes to glide away from Niall’s grip on Louis, firm but familiar. A flash to weeks back, before Harry grew fur and howled at the moon, perhaps. “How’s the generator holding up?”

“S’good,” He replies through a bite of toast, grinning at Liam with food all through his mouth in response to the exasperated look on Liam’s face, “Might need a bit of tinkering, though. Think Louis might have run into it last moon.”

“That’s right,” Louis says loudly, shrugging off Niall’s hand, “Blame it on me, like always. Forget the fact we’ve got Bambi over here.” He jerks his head in Harry’s direction. The flush of shame that spreads from head to toe makes Harry feel hot and fidgety, Liam’s head swivelling to him like one of those swinging carnival clown heads, mouth agape.

“Think the analogy’s a bit off.” Niall remarks, eyebrows raised.

“Whatever,” Louis rolls his eyes, “Point is, maybe Styles should be helping out around here.”

No one says anything – Zayn’s nowhere to be found, and the others stay mum – so Harry finds himself crouching down with Liam next to the generator after they’ve both finished eating. He didn’t even know it existed - hadn’t really thought about how they powered the place, to be honest. There were no power lines, but Harry’d had rather more pressing things on his mind.

The sureness to Liam’s fine motor skills suggests he’s been doing this kind of thing a while. It makes Harry feel like he doesn’t need to be here, holding a few screwdrivers with Liam’s toolbox dumped at their ankles.

The quiet of the forest is anything but calming, the itch of phantom insects crawling up his legs making him shudder.

“How long?” He tries, wincing a little when it comes out rough and unfriendly. Liam’s about the only one who’s been straight forward with him. The fact he actually told Harry what he was there for meant he was legions ahead of the others. “I mean – how long have you been doing this for?”

“You mean how long’ve I been an electrician?” Liam asks, frowning down at the set of valves on the side of the generator. “Or how long have I been helping Zayn out?”

Harry wonders when he became so obvious – or whether it’s a symptom of this link that’s been forged between the four of them. Maybe Liam’s in on it as well, some kind of elective situation. He’s an electrician – the thought makes Harry think that maybe it was something like accidental faulty wiring at first; wiring that they properly engineered later, roping in Liam and then Harry when he was unconscious and drowsy from the full moon.

The thought makes Harry swallow thickly – that they did something to him whilst he was sleeping, another choice taken away like they felt he wasn’t old enough to make the decision for himself. It’s what it feels like – Zayn’s treating him like a child who can’t handle responsibility. Harry’s _twenty-one,_ but adulthood was a fantasy that was ripped from him like the skin was ripped from his body days ago; a skin that’s been shed to reveal the truth – the monster – underneath.

“Been about,” Liam hums in thought, puckering his lips, “I’d say four years now. We were friends at uni before Zayn dropped out.”

“Uni?” Harry blurts out, snapping his mouth closed to stop any other words from escaping. The less he knows about these strangers, the better – God forbid he get attached.

 _You’re biding your time,_ he reminds himself. It doesn’t sit right, though, that thought.

_What’s the harm in occupying myself?_

No one answers. Harry snorts silently – of course, they don’t.

“Yeah,” Liam answers distractedly, tapping two fingers on the outside of Harry’s wrist until he turns his hand over, offering up the metal in his grip. Liam takes it, dropping what he’d been using into Harry’s dirty palm as a replacement. “Both of us did literature, if you can believe it. I had no clue – my sister loved it, so I thought I’d give it a go.” He looks up, smiling brilliantly; his face transforms, the crinkles by his eyes adding to the twinkle of his happy gaze. “Fat lot of good it did me, but I met Zayn and – of course – my girlfriend Sophia.”

“That’s nice,” Harry replies after a pause, tongue feeling numb in his mouth. What a normal, non-supernatural life Liam is living.

“Sophia’s the one who told me I should be using my hands,” Liam says matter-of-factly, before he stops what he’s doing to blush a brilliant dark pink, beard barely hiding any colouring at all. “I mean – she saw how rubbish I was at essay writing, and I was always fixing the stuff around our place, anyway.”

“Makes sense.” Harry answers, trying to save this poor, poor boy.

“Yeah,” Liam nods, getting back to it, “She’s the breadwinner, you know.”

“I didn’t,” replies Harry, bland and unassuming.

“Right,” Liam nods again, a little hurriedly, “She, like, has this absolute knack for art, you know. Not the– not the making, or anything. She told me once you can’t buy taste – and, I dunno, I think she’s right. Some of the things she picks out look absolutely horrid, but then she’ll go off and sell them for double what she bought them for.”

Harry imagines Sophia to be a tall and leggy young woman. Perhaps she has dark black hair and a discerning look in her eyes, with a thing for cliché pornos that star plumbers and pool boys and electricians. Harry can’t imagine warm, friendly Liam with her at all.

The jealousy sits deep in his stomach though, spreading across the inner lining like particularly nasty bacteria. Maybe when this is all over, Harry should ditch art history and become a tradesman. Better yet, maybe he should work in those big banks in the city – somewhere as far away from this nightmare as possible.

“Harry–” Liam twists his mouth, biting the inside of his right cheek. He drops his tools suddenly, shifting to face Harry there as they both crouch in the damp dirt. “I– … Niall told me, you know. And I– I just want to say you’re very lucky.”

 _Told you what?_ The thought rushes in – then Harry remembers, realises, and reacts.

“Lucky?” He repeats dully, staring at Liam with a blank face.

“Sophia and I–” Liam huffs, shooting Harry a smile that doesn’t suit his optimistic face, “Well, it’s not as easy, you know, for everyone.”

Harry wants to push Liam into the muddy puddle behind them, to grab his hands and shove them onto Harry’s stomach and scream and scream and scream – _do you think this was easy?_ He’d cry, fury boiling his blood. _Do you think anything about this was easy? I’m a_ MONSTER! _I could kill you–_

“When my sister gave birth to my niece,” Liam continues, like Harry’s fists haven’t clenched, like his rib cage isn’t aching with the force of his heart banging against it, so desperate to escape its prison, “I was there, in the room. Her boyfriend… he’s not in the picture. She asked me to hold her hand, and I–” He laughs, but it’s wet and a little ugly and Harry feels his breath catch, his pulse still thumping frantically, the nape of his neck damp with sweat. “I cried through the whole thing, like the idiot I am. Louis laughed at me when I told him, but – children are amazing, and my sister was amazing, and I just–” He looks at Harry again, eyes glistening. “You’re really lucky.”

Harry doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how he’d say it even if he did. _Lucky_ was never a part of this – was he lucky, to be out alone that night a month ago? Was he lucky, to grow a– a– … well, to grow organs he has no business growing? All for the sake of reproduction, or maintaining the status quo, or _honour?_

He clenches his jaw, exhaling shakily as he closes his eyes. _This isn’t Liam’s fault._

He’s become an omega, but that’s _all_ he’s become – at least to them. They see someone who can pop out a baby and they think he’s happy about it? That he’s _lucky?_ That he should feel _honoured?_ Harry wants to take claws to himself during the next full moon and pull out the unwanted, the foreign, and eat _that_ instead of any rabbit. He wants to spit it into Zayn’s face, give his wolfish grin, and let his inhuman healing deal with the rest. He wants to wake up with a jagged scar across his belly and the feeling that he’s himself again – that only once a month does he change, and the rest of the time he can ignore it. Because this _isn’t_ him, hasn’t ever been.

Harry doesn’t have a uterus. Even as a wolf, he’s not meant to have working nipples. He’s been using his four as a joke for years – now the sight of them makes him feel ill, a reminder of what he’s been turned into, the unnatural thing he’s become.

In the end, Liam takes Harry’s silence as indication to change the subject. Either he doesn’t notice or he’s ignoring the way Harry’s digging nails into his palms, and they finish the maintenance of the generator with little fanfare.

“Where’s Zayn?” Liam asks Niall as the two of them pass him by, the fairer-haired man sitting on the steps down to the backyard – though it’s more of an open-ended space, really, with unkempt grass and mud and the beginning of scraggly roots leading to the old trees that make up the forest. It’s easier to call it a backyard, however – it gives Harry a sense of normalcy.

“He’s just comin’ back now, I think.” Niall says, a thoughtful look on his face. Liam nods but doesn’t linger. Harry follows him, for lack of anything better to do – Liam’s a slice of what Harry wants, and it eases his too-tight skin to be near him, despite his earlier comments.

But Liam gives him a look like he’s being a bit of a bother, so Harry drops back and lands heavily on the couch, ignoring Louis’ huff of displeasure when he’s jostled. He’s got his dirty feet up on the stained coffee table, and he’s watching the old television. Harry hasn’t been bothered – the DVD collection’s not so much to his tastes, so he’d perused the bookshelves instead.

The next week goes on similarly, with Harry catching up on every piece of media since the 80’s, it seems. Liam joins them again the next Sunday, delivering more groceries. He disappears once more, and Harry sees him leave with a parting hug to Zayn and a rectangular package in his right hand. It’s medium sized, and Harry’s curiosity piques.

Zayn remains elusive. Harry figures out he’s a late sleeper, though he never seems to enter rooms in pyjamas, a tired look on his face. No – he’s always dressed and avoiding Harry’s stares with an impassive expression, listening to Niall’s reports of the cabin’s safety, and what Harry’s picked up on as ‘patrols’. It seems odd that they’d need to do something like that, but maybe they’ve struck up a deal to stay in this secluded place. Maybe they’re all rangers or the like, looking out for the wildlife and making sure tourists don’t stray off the well-beaten paths.

 _Why didn’t they stop me?_ Harry wonders.

He doesn’t have much opportunity to investigate these oddities, however, because Louis has taken to monopolising his time whenever he can. It gets irritating by the end of the first week, and by the second Harry’s well and truly fed up.

“Will you leave me alone?” Harry snaps, halfway through Louis’ retelling of some wild night out at uni. Harry just wants to lie on the grass outside in peace. Something about the blue sky circled by green canopy reminds him of home, where he should be. Not talking to Louis about the kind of life Harry left behind.

“Jesus, what was in _your_ porridge this mornin’?” Louis retorts, a mean look on his face. Never mind that they didn’t have porridge for breakfast – but these things don’t seem to matter to Louis, Harry’s learnt.

Harry swings his head to look at Louis, hoping his expression says enough.

“It’s not so bloody bad; Jesus Christ, Styles!” Louis groans, flinging his arms up in exasperation. He hasn’t moved from the couch since two films ago, neither of which were Harry’s picks. “You’ve got a roof over your head, good food, and _thrilling_ company.” He grins, though there’s a tiredness around his eyes. “I’d wager things are pretty damn fantastic.”

“Fantastic?” echoes Harry, indignation lighting up his insides and making his stomach rumble. He sits up, glaring at the shorter man. “ _Fuck you,_ Louis.”

He doesn’t bother to say goodbye, standing up and storming past Louis crouched on the steps.

When he turns into the hallway, intent on getting to the bathroom and washing his face to rid himself of the tremble in his hands, he’s stopped by a solid figure. Huffing out a sound of surprise at the way he stumbles back a step, a firm hand lands on his shoulder and steadies him.

Harry looks up from his feet at the same time that the pads of Zayn’s fingers slide back to brush against his bite. Harry’s breath hitches, his lips part – his skin tingles all over, goosebumps forming even on his forearms.

The scar _sings,_ the cresting feeling a thank you for all the times Harry’s pulled away from Zayn – his presence, his touch. At the back of his mind, Harry feels that other island again; for the first time in weeks. It crows with delight, fidgets on the balls of its feet in anticipation.

Harry feels like Zayn’s inches taller than him, his stare so captivating. Harry wants to lean closer, fall into the dark depths of his gaze and never come out. Zayn’s grip tightens, his palm almost over the bite in full, when–

“Don’t be like that, Harry!” Louis calls out, breaking through the haze of – God, Harry almost thinks it might’ve been some kind of brainwash.

Harry shoves Zayn’s hand away from his neck, shuddering when the contact ceases. Without sparing the alpha a glance, he stumbles into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him decisively.

But the tingling doesn’t stop and the crest doesn’t fall. It keeps climbing higher; Harry has to brace his hands against the basin to ease their tremors. He’s leant over the sink, looking up only to see the damp hair sticking lightly to his forehead, the dart of his eyes across his face and surrounds.

His scar burns hot – but it’s not painful; if anything, Harry likens it to the warmth of the fireplace after a frigid day outside. It makes his chest flush, his stomach clench like it’s expecting something to bowl him over, to make impact.

His blood rushes in his ears, a roar that reaches a crescendo as Harry drops to his knees, sweaty brow pushing into the cabinets as he presses blunt nails into the tops of his thighs. None of it helps, none of it offers distraction or relief until the wave washes over him, an ocean of–

Harry looks down at his crotch once it’s over, shaking, to see it bone dry.

The house is suspiciously quiet when Harry exits the bathroom, though the tingling still remains in his legs. He goes to bed despite the fact it’s only just past lunch, and he lies down and reads. He tries to forget about bites and crests as the words of Shakespeare wash over him, but the feelings linger like they’re trying to remind him of something – he imagines it might be like Neville’s Rememberall in _Harry Potter_ ; he knows he’s forgotten, but he can’t quite remember just what it is that he has.

The sensations stay with him for days; the intermittent tingling of his legs, the burn of his bite, the breathlessness of the memory.

The Wednesday before the full moon is when it catches up with him. The air’s been muggy since Harry woke early that morning, but it’s only in the late afternoon that it begins to take effect. The droplets are heavy, weighted with the past week’s drought.

Harry looks out of the glass doors that separate the living room from the veranda. The rain’s falling almost completely vertical, and the roof over the wood outside protects most of it from the elements. The edges of the planks are mouldy, rotting with age. Harry knows because he’s stared at it enough. He’s memorised this place like it’s the last thing he’ll ever see. He knows the tile patterns in both of the bathrooms by heart. If he closes his eyes, he can picture the stains of bleach on the laundry floor from one too many spills. He knows the dust pattern under his bed, disturbed only by the socks that lie there, thrown haphazardly into their hiding place for no other reason than perhaps embarrassment. He knows the tap in the kitchen has been dripping since the day after Liam was last here. He knows which books in the library haven’t been read for years, their spines firm and unbroken. Harry knows that Zayn doesn’t sleep here like the rest of them do. Harry can picture Louis’ messy, grubby room with comics on the floor and clothes dumped on a chair by the corner. Harry can feel the vibrations of Niall’s guitar like an imaginary melody, even as it sits in its stand by his bedside table. He knows that Zayn smells like the slightest hint of saffron.

Harry’s memorised this place like it’s the last thing he’ll ever see – because maybe it is.

He opens the doors, letting them hang wide. He’s barefoot, only a t-shirt adorning his shoulders and denim shorts sitting at his hips. He’s so warm _all the time,_ and the pins and needles of his legs only make it worse, more unsettling.

The water is cool relief on the soles of his feet. The squelch of the wet grass makes his chest squeeze tight, and Harry shuts his eyes until he can see it in front of him.

_“Get away from there, Harry!” His mum calls behind him. Harry turns his head, sees her stood in the jamb of their back door. She’s as beautiful as she always is, her blue eyes bright even from far away. “You’ll catch a cold!” She’s smiling at him. It’s summer rain, so Harry knows he won’t catch a cold. Gemma told him so – she’s so smart. She just turned eight, after all._

_“Look at the birds, Mum!” Harry calls out over his shoulder, turning back to take in the flap of wings with rapture, the panicked squawking. “They don’t know what to do!”_

_“Leave those poor birds alone, Harry Styles, and come in for some tea!” Her voices gets a little distant, like she’s gone back inside proper. “And dry yourself off before you do!”_

_Harry smiles up at the birds, feeling the water sink into his dimples and make a home. His curls cling to his cheekbones, but Harry doesn’t care. It’s summer, and that means he can spend every day outside looking at the birds, rain or shine, with his mum and Gemma and Robin and tea only feet away, waiting for him–_

“Harry.”

Harry whips his head around, blinking through the wet. Zayn stands in the jamb – like Harry’s mum, way back when. Except he’s not smiling. He’s not ever smiling.

“You should come inside.” Zayn says, but Harry doesn’t want to – he doesn’t know why Zayn wants him to come inside, but Harry just knows that he doesn’t want whatever Zayn seems to want.

“No,” Harry answers, “Leave me alone.” Zayn’s face twitches – Harry would call it a flinch if he was feeling self-indulgent – and he steps forward onto the back veranda, like he’s threatening something.

“Don’t make me–”

“Make you?” His legs are beginning to hurt, with all these imaginary needles. Days of this, weeks of boredom and captivity, months of being a _werewolf–_

“Harry,” Zayn starts, but Harry doesn’t want to hear it.

“Try it!” He exclaims as the storm fires lightning through the sky, thunder following a second later. “Come on! You’ve been desperate to order me around since day one!” Suddenly there are buckets and buckets of rain, pouring down like Harry’s Noah and he’s just built his ark. Zayn seems to think it’s easing up, with the way he strides forward, down the steps and stopping only a metre or so away from Harry.

“Come inside.” He demands, now drenched.

Harry looks away, tries to ignore the magnetic presence of the man to his right. The forest looks weighed down and tired with the wet, and the dark clouds overhead cast a shadow on the usually sunny and idyllic trees that surround them.

“You’re the Alpha,” Harry says, raising his voice to be heard over the rush of water. He pauses only a second before turning his head, catching Zayn’s hard stare, “Have at it.”

Zayn says and does nothing. He just stares flatly at Harry, his jaw sharp and his tattoos stark against his skin. Harry’s not surprised. Zayn’s done nothing since this all began – he’d rather stare at Harry, or imply he’s ungrateful, or touch his neck like he has any kind of _right._

“Some leader you are.” Harry snaps in a continuation of his own thoughts, tasting rain. Then Zayn’s glaring at him, brows strong and angry. Harry feels the tingle spread through not only his legs, but his torso and his arms, right up to his bite until it all turns into that burning from before. It makes his teeth ache and his lungs strain, and all he wants to do is make Zayn feel this way, too – displaced, invaded, irrevocably altered.

Suddenly, Harry’s furious.

“Come on, then!” Harry shouts through the rain, sheets and sheets now pouring down and making it difficult to see much at all. Zayn’s face is partially shrouded by the growing dusk, but his eyes flash orange with his glare, and drops of water collect on his obscenely long eyelashes. The two of them should be cold – freezing, actually, even though it’s now July – but every splash of moisture on Harry’s skin heats the blood barrelling through his insides, and it’s plain to see that the veins in Zayn’s arms are protruding, like the clenched fists he’s making are enough to get his heart pumping viciously. “Do it!”

“Harry, are you bloody mad?” Niall yells, rushing down the steps to the back to join them. Harry whips his head around, eyes wide with challenge, to see the silhouette of Louis leaning against the door jamb, relaxed and waiting behind Niall.

With a frighteningly inhuman growl, Harry turns back around and strides forward in the same beat, ignoring Niall’s shouts. His eyes catch Zayn’s for a moment – only one moment – and then it’s like he’s been hit by a lorry; but it’s not Zayn’s sodden torso that he feels against him. In fact, it’s still just the torrential rain, unrelentingly pissing down and making it hard to see. He closes his eyes to fight off the piercing sting that’s struck his temples, barely feeling the harsh grip of Zayn’s hands around his wrists, Harry falling into him.

_what is he doing bloody idiot fuck what i’m gonna kill can’t believe ZAYN what fuck fuck fuck how am i goin to HARRY idiot fix this never had this before after home home HOME_

_jesus this is taking a while when is zayn going to put him in his place finally i’m so sick of this i wish mum were here god this place is a dump_

_protect him can’t let him hurt i’m sorry harry i’m sorry niall i’m sorry lou i’m trying i promise i’m trying TRYING please stop_

“–look at me,” orders Zayn. Harry squeezes his eyes shut more tightly, shaking his head and registering the plaster of hair to his wet cheeks. Zayn rattles him, shakes his wrists. “ _Look_ at me, Harry.”

They’re on the ground, now. Puddles pool at their knees; Harry doesn’t much feel the mud that cakes his shins, or the ache of his wrists in Zayn’s vice grip.

“Is this really what you want?” Zayn asks, and he sounds tired, he sounds sorry. Harry looks to him, sees the glare in his gaze and wonders how he got this so wrong. Frustration bubbles up inside him, a red-hot flower blooming under the most precise conditions.

Harry pushes him away with a cry, clawing after Zayn as he falls back onto his arse, a flicker of something crossing his face. His dark hair looks inky black in the wet, and Harry’s knees straddle Zayn’s waist without consideration for how it might feel, trapped against the drenched dirt and unable to escape.

“DO IT!” screams Harry through the rush of water that threatens to drown them.

The elbow to the face comes as a surprise, even though Harry had been practically begging for Zayn to act. Reeling back, he recovers quickly – _werewolves,_ comes a thought – and lifts his arm, leaning in to deliver a blow to Zayn.

Their forearms smack together so forcefully that Harry feels his ulna reverberate, a domino effect right up to his clavicle.

Then everything speeds up, Harry operating purely on some long-forgotten instinct to protect himself. Again and again and again Zayn parries his hits, and then he’s bucking Harry off of him easily. Their legs tangle. Harry brings his left knee up to swipe at Zayn’s side, but he’s too lithe, too practised – he shifts out of the way, and Harry’s fingers in his henley make it rip, a sound made silent by the storm that rages on around them.

Harry’s blunt but ragged nails scrape into Zayn’s chest, making his tattoos distort underneath four distinct red lines, swelling up with every passing millisecond. The vibration of Zayn’s grunt runs through Harry, setting his neurons alight and making him push harder, hips thrusting up to get Zayn off of him – but the alpha is too strong despite his deceiving stature, and Harry finds himself breathing heavily, hair sticking to his eyelids, as he pushes at Zayn’s defined shoulders. The red lips of his tattoo stare at Harry like a challenge.

Like a temptation.

“Listen to me,” Zayn demands, and Harry drags his eyes away from red to glare up at him, still wriggling in an attempt to get away, “If you want to fight, we can fight.”

“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?” Harry snarks, but then Zayn seems to lose it suddenly, his arms a blur until somehow, he’s got Harry’s wrists pinned to his own chest, and Zayn’s feet are locking down Harry’s legs like Harry’s not got a fair few inches on him.

“ _Listen._ ”

Harry ignores him.

“ _You_ did this to me!” he cries, and then he’s truly crying, red eyes the only indication because he’s squinting up into the rain, tasting the salt of his tears and the grit of the mud – splattered all over his face, most likely. “Why did you do this to me?” Zayn’s eyes flit between Harry’s, his jaw clenching. “Everything’s wrong,” Harry chokes out, thinking about the things inside him that shouldn’t be there, that dug their way in and won’t fucking leave, “ _It’s all wrong._ ”

“I didn’t–”

Harry surges up, unable to hear the rest. Their foreheads smash against each other, and in the ensuing confusion Harry manages to grab Zayn by the shoulders and shove him to the side, clambering to take control and show Zayn exactly how Harry’s been feeling; his body a betrayal that won’t transform into resignation – instead it’s a constant reminder of what he’s become, and what he’s failed to triumph over.

Zayn’s sprawled beneath him now, the rain running in rivulets down the sides of his face, the smallest of puddles forming right in the middle of his brow and on the flattest parts of his cheekbone. His hair is matted to his forehead, curling slightly over his ears. His chest heaves underneath Harry, exposed to the cool air of a summer storm; he’s exuding heat, though – so much so that there’s steam coming off of his tattooed skin.

Harry’s right palm smacks down onto Zayn’s collarbone, pressing and pressing and _pressing–_

“Do what you have to do.” Zayn gasps out, instinctively trying to surge up from the mud Harry’s pushing him down into, the ground he’s dislodging to make way for bones and muscle. Soon there won’t be enough give and something else will cave in, instead.

Their eyes lock again and Harry stares at the freckle in Zayn’s eye, the lashes that are clumping together in the downpour.

_if this makes it okay if he’s okay i hope so i’ll do it maybe niall can step up that’d be nice wonder what mum and dad are doing they’ll be alright everyone will be alright_

Faster than he’d thought himself capable, Harry flings his body back, landing heavily in a dark brown puddle four or so feet away. He’s scrambling backwards, eyes wide and horror colouring his every cell like ink dispersing through water.

Zayn lies there staring up at the dusk’s stormy sky, torso heaving with every breath as he gulps down air.

Harry leaves him. He stumbles to his feet. He accidentally shoulders past a dumbstruck Niall. He shuts out Louis’ ominous stare.

He almost knocks himself out on the top step before he locks himself away in his bedroom – _Zayn’s bedroom_ – by slamming the door. The old, dark wood rattles in its frame.

He sinks to the floor, staring at his hands. The rain pelts down – the roof creaking as if about to buckle – and Harry sobs.

 

***

 

Just like no two fingerprints are the same, no two snowflakes are identical – the snowflake is a more applicable analogy, because how a snowflake forms is dictated by its unique circumstances. Genes are genes – they’re instructions on how our bodies should be made, should grow. But the formation of a snowflake results in an end product that never turns out the same even if its environment is replicated; because whilst the basic idea of a snowflake remains the same – atoms becoming cold enough to form bonds between each other – the way it travels through air currents, the water molecules it picks up along the way, and the relative temperature and humidity of where exactly it’s decided to call home… they all attribute to its creation. And so with each variable the equation changes, and the snowflake alters in shape, size, weight, and fragility.

These are all the things Harry learnt back in sixth form, when Chemistry was a bore and the individuality of a snowflake wasn’t something he thought about outside of the classroom. His mind would wander onto more interesting things like what his Mum was making for dinner that night, the concert later that month, or the mesmerising thickness of Mr Fuller’s muscular thighs.

But it comes back to him now in technicolour – the ways in which things form. There are diamonds, which are just carbon structures under immense pressure; there’s conglomerate rock, which is like a mixed pot of rock sizes and structures bound together by natural cement; there’s quartz glass, which requires lightning to hit sand and form fulgurites. Like those sculptures that Reese Witherspoon’s love interest makes a living off of in _Sweet Home Alabama._

He’s seeing it vividly; with so much clarity it’s like he’s living it all over again, even though his eyes are closed.

The creak of the door breaks the relative quiet of the room. It’s so slight, so soft, that Harry might’ve believed it to be the cool breeze coming in from outside. If only his window weren’t closed.

“Sorry,” apologises Niall, and Harry blinks open his eyes to see a hunched over silhouette by the door, which now stands ajar. “Didn’t mean to wake ya.”

“What _did_ you mean to do?” It’s quiet, respectful of the night. Harry doesn’t want to break the haze of relaxation his body’s in right now even if his face feels puffy, his mind still exhausted from so much crying despite the memories accosting him.

The room remains as is. Niall shuffles over to the bed, climbing in without a word until his left cheek lands on the pillow. Harry stares at the ceiling, ignoring the buzz of insects outside now that the rain has eased up.

“I was nineteen, y’know,” Niall begins after a pause, and Harry turns his head to look at him. They’re barely inches apart – Harry can feel the gentle exhales against his lips now that he’s paying attention. He can see the laugh lines around Niall’s eyes, the five o’clock shadow on his chin. He glimpses the dark circles under his eyes, and the dryness of his lips. Everything is in a particular kind of detail that Harry’s only ever imagined existed. There’s no blur up close, no limit to his vision. It’s a reminder of what they are; but in the dark of the late night and the aftermath of the day, he finds he doesn’t put up much of a fight at the thought.

“I was nineteen,” Niall repeats, and he swallows. Harry can hear it, just as he can see the flutter of Niall’s eyelids as he tries not to cry. He keeps them shut tight, and Harry reaches his right hand up from his lap to grip at the pale wrist that lies between them. He shifts until they’re facing each other, and nothing about it feels like it has with others. There was an unspoken need that Harry answered, like intuition.

The other place in his head is quiet. There’s no thought leaking through, from anyone. No impression.

“They don’t tell you how much it hurts,” Niall continues, like Harry’s been receiving his thoughts, like Niall’s _wanting_ him to, “The chemo. It’s a fuckin’ nightmare, you can’t even imagine.”

Harry closes his eyes, matching his breathing to Niall’s and wishing neither of them were here, like this.

“Acute Myeloid Leukemia,” Niall reveals, a whisper in Harry’s bed, into Harry’s sheets, “Never thought I’d hear those words spoken to me in a doctor’s office, me Da’s hand in mine – but that’s life, I guess.”

Harry squeezes Niall’s hand, tugging it closer to his chest as if to say – I’m here and I’m breathing and my blood is pumping loud and strong _just like you._

“I knew Liam from primary,” Harry opens his eyes and stares at Niall’s brown lashes, the way they’re shooting out in all directions like he’s been rubbing at his eyes all day, “Moved around a lot as a kid, and we kept in touch. Didn’t talk much after I left,” Niall snorts, “But when people find out you have cancer, all they want to do is talk.”

“Niall,” Harry murmurs, but Niall opens his eyes as interruption, quirking his lips up into a facsimile of a smile.

“Told me he had a friend,” He says after a pause, and Harry knows not to say anything this time, “Said he could help. I didn’t believe him at first, but – well, you know Liam. Didn’t think that boy could lie to save his life. And what was one more disappointment? I was skin ‘n’ bones, couldn’t keep food down,” He smiles for real this time, mouth turned down at the corners like he’s trying not to, “Bald as anything.”

Harry shoves him lightly with their joined hands, smiling at Niall’s chuckle. The pillow’s damp under his right eye, but he lets Niall go on.

“So, I met with ‘em, but Zayn didn’t know what Liam was doing,” He sniffs, tugging Harry’s hand to his own chest now, like he needs to borrow his beating heart, “Took one look at me and started ripping into Liam. You can imagine, he’s broody enough – ‘how could you do this without telling me?’ and ‘why’re you makin’ me feel bad?’ and ‘what if I kill him?’ – all that kind of stuff.” Niall’s impression is so spot on that Harry almost freezes in fear of being caught, the two of them tangled up and speaking. He’s not entirely sure Zayn would appreciate it, for some reason.

“And then what?” Harry croaks, when it seems like Niall’s not going to continue.

“And then Liam told me what was really going on,” Niall explains, throat bobbing. His voice goes soft with the memory, “And I told Zayn I had a nephew on the way, and I just wanted to be alive to hold him at least once.”

“ _Niall–_ ” But that’s all he manages, curling up and into the man in front of him, grabbing at the loose collar of his white t-shirt and wringing it in his grip, shoulders shaking with silent sobs.

“He never said no, Haz,” Niall whispers into Harry’s sweaty hair, his left palm cradling the back of Harry’s head and the other still gripping Harry’s hand in a vice grip, “And I tried to explain it – but Zayn, he wasn’t as… he wasn’t really an alpha back then. It was just him. Alone.”

“What–” Harry starts, sniffing loudly in the dark, pulling back to look at Niall’s face. His eyes are darting between Harry’s, but his expression is kind. Patient. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that what you experienced – what you heard earlier… that’s what it was like for me at first. Zayn bit me, and I was so weak from the Leukemia and he was so new to lycanthropy that it was just a public forum.” Niall brushes Harry’s messy curls back from his forehead, and the cool air to his face lets Harry breathe a little better, lets him listen more closely. “My thoughts were his and his were mine.”

Wrapping his head around this seems inconceivable; those precious seconds in the daylight, the water threatening to soak them to the bone, had felt like eons. They’d felt like someone had reached into his body and taken a hold of his spinal cord and _yanked._ They’d felt as if the very tendrils of Harry’s soul had been stripped naked and shoved out a window, all gangly limbs and awkward cover-ups and the sinking, leaden feeling of shame and guilt and dread all jumbled up into one.

He can’t fathom it for more than a minute – can’t possibly stand the thought of going through that from the beginning. Waking up to Niall’s gentle face and likely hearing something along the lines of _Welcome to lycanthropy, Harry. What can I get you? A cup of tea? A helping of the supernatural? Maybe a uterus? Let me know!_

“I’m so sorry,” whispers Harry, bringing their hands up to press his cool lips to Niall’s knuckles.

“Zayn and I know each other as well as anyone could, and then some,” Niall replies, and he sounds unaffected – like hearing another person’s thoughts race through your mind for what was probably months was a complete non-issue, “So I know that he’s been trying to help you the only way he knows how. I’ve spoken to him about it, but…” Niall huffs out a breath, “Zayn’s stubborn.”

Harry huffs out a breath, as close to a snort as he can give considering the circumstances.

“Point is,” Niall begins to conclude, shifting until their eyes connect, fierce blue to green. Harry wonders whether Niall knows he could do or say anything with that look. “Best to give him a break, yeah? He’s tryin’, really.” Niall quirks the corner of his mouth, eyes warm. “And he’s a good person.”

“I’m sorry, you know,” He continues after a pause, “I wasn’t easy on you that first month. Didn’t really have a clue what I was doin’, but that’s no excuse. I should’ve known. Zayn’s explained it so many times.” He hesitates, teeth in his bottom lip before he exhales, putting on a small smile.

Harry doesn’t know what else to say. He’s not exactly thankful, and he doesn’t know whether Niall deserves to be forgiven. He’s still in that in-between, that limbo; he might be somewhat resigned to his situation, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it. And why should he be making the rest of them feel less guilty about what they’ve done?

Somehow, in some way, in the space of a breath he sleeps, and then he wakes; his neck twinges as if he’s been in the same position all night despite the fact that Niall’s gone, and he’s sprawled on his stomach.

He can hear the conversation, fast and familiar, downstairs. Tugging on a pair of loose and ratty jeans Liam leant him last time he visited – “They’re mine.” He’d said, smiling bashfully, “Sorry ‘bout that. I’ve got chicken legs, a bit.” – he follows the rise and fall of dialogue until he’s hanging about the open doorway into the kitchen. Zayn’s at the hob, his head bent over the frypan of what looks like ratatouille. There’s a fanning pattern on his neck, black ink turning green in age. It peeks out the back of his stretched collar; Harry’s eyes follow the lines of Zayn’s shoulders and the way the shirt hangs off of his smaller frame, implying a waist that tapers in to slim hips.

Niall catches his eye, grin fading into something a little less brash in the face of his friends; he gives the slightest nod as Louis gestures wildly opposite, exclaiming through a mouthful of toast about something Harry can’t be bothered to focus in on.

Harry’s neck aches, so he twists it from shoulder to shoulder as he shuffles into the room. Zayn turns, eyes flitting to Harry before he moves forward to spoon the vegetables onto Niall’s plate, given he sits the closest to the stove. There’s a pause before Niall snorts, shooting down Louis with a few well-placed jabs.

There’s something to this moment that has a hold on him – maybe it’s the aroma of spices coming from Zayn’s cooking, or the good-natured brotherly fighting between Niall and Louis; maybe it’s the satisfied soreness in Harry’s muscles, the warmth of the sun coming through the kitchen window. It doesn’t so much matter what it is, just that it makes Harry wonder about other days like this: mornings sat across from Louis and kicking his shins under the table with an innocent smile, Niall laughing into his toast.

“Hey,” Harry says quietly once he’s near, and Zayn’s eyes snap to him despite the others’ loud squabbling. There’s a pause – like Zayn’s waiting for the punchline – before his face clears, his lips twitching minutely in his own unique version of a soft smile.

“Hey.” Zayn replies, and Harry feels the tension at the base of his neck disappear, like someone magicked it away with a quick vanishing spell _._

He should maybe stop reading the lovingly scuffed _Harry Potter_ books that had sat in the library before he’d touched them, well-read but neglected.

 _I’m sorry,_ Harry projects. Zayn pauses in heaping the ratatouille onto Louis’ plate for only a second before continuing, like Harry hadn’t thought a word.

In wake of Niall’s story, Harry gives Zayn a reprieve – it’s not only for Zayn, though, whose pauses have become longer, his gaze piercing into the sides of Harry’s face when he thinks Harry doesn’t notice. No. It’s not just for Zayn, but for Harry himself. He’s tired, is the thing. His energy is a well that’s been depleted, and his usual methods of replenishing it aren’t around. He can’t go to his Mum’s for a weekend, or hang out with Gemma, or party with Nick and all of them. He can’t have a scented bath with his candles, or have someone braid his hair with music playing softly in the background. None of that’s available to him anymore, and reacting so viscerally to what he’s been faced with is only making him more tired and less capable of coping.

He’s biding his time, but he also knows it’ll be easier if he stops fighting it so much, even if the fighting is just in his head.

 _Is this just Stockholm Syndrome?_ The thought comes to him when he’s in the shower the night before his second full moon, scrubbing underneath his nails from a day out in the yard with Niall, planting vegetables and herbs and hoping they’ll come along well enough that it’ll be one less thing they have to buy.

No amount of gardening, however, has tricked him – living off the grid, with people smiling at him and joking around and making fun of him… that’s not a trap he’s fallen into. It’s people coping, on all fronts. Niall and Louis might be perfectly happy with never seeing their families again, at least regularly – but Harry refuses to become complacent. His form of coping is thinking up all of the ways he’s going to leave this place. Niall gardens. Louis jokes. Zayn disappears for hours at a time without a word.

Harry plots – and that’s not stopping simply because Zayn might’ve saved Niall’s life however many years ago; might’ve scared the excess of white blood cells right out of Niall’s veins, like an imaginary monster that frightens little children at the mere possibility of its existence.

 _Maybe they’ll let you leave,_ part of him tries to reason, _maybe they’ll see how well you’re coping and let you go._

“Ready?”

Harry jumps, Louis’s heavy hand on his shoulder a jolt to his system – he’s not used to being caught by surprise anymore. Adapting to his senses has been seamless, for the most part. Harry can’t quite remember what it was like not being able to hear Niall and Zayn’s murmured conversation from thirty feet away.

“Yeah,” he croaks, clearing his throat at Louis’s raised eyebrow, “Let’s just get it over with.”

Louis laughs, throwing his head back and flashing his white teeth.

“Styles, you’re too much.” He says, shaking his head with a chuckle before jumping from the veranda and forgoing the back steps in the process, bare feet in no pain at all at the leap. He doesn’t seem to care about the moist dirt underneath his heels, nor his own nudity as he runs toward the forest’s edge.

Harry looks up to see the darkening sky, its grey clouds promising rain. He can smell it in the air – there’s a thickness to every inhale, a minute stickiness on his tongue. A breeze ruffles the leaves in the forest canopy, and Harry glimpses a bat’s angular wings take to air, a black silhouette that makes him shiver, his lungs freezing in fear at the realisation that he’s about to lose himself again.

Every step on the soft ground through the patchy grass and across exposed roots has Harry’s stomach clenching uncomfortably; he eases at the sight of the other three, clothes gone, on the forest perimeter. But ice pierces his every cell, like he’s getting frostbite all over – like those diagrams they showed in Biology of it taking effect.

“You alright?” Niall asks him gently once they’re next to each other, Louis between the two of them and Zayn, who’s up ahead – the alpha’s leading them to the clearing where their clothes are stored in a garbage bag; where they’ll sprout fur at the full moon’s luminous welcome and make their way from there.

“No,” mutters Harry, swallowing heavily when Zayn’s head turns back to them, his dark eyes glinting supernaturally in the darkening dusk.

Niall ignores him, bringing a hand up to squeeze at Harry’s neck. Suddenly the churning in his gut eases, and his shoulders drop. He exhales shakily, closing his eyes as they come to a stop.

The hand squeezes reassuringly once more before removing itself. Harry opens his eyes to see Zayn in front of them, Niall leaving them to playfully put Louis in a headlock.

“Stay with me,” Zayn orders, and Harry’s proverbial (maybe not so proverbial in ten or so minutes) hackles rise.

“Do I have a choice?”

Zayn doesn’t say anything – of course, he doesn’t – but his eyes rove over Harry’s face until they’re dropping to his shoulders, following the lines of his body right down to his feet. Harry’s no stranger to nudity, but even this casual scrutiny has him fighting off a blush.

“You should get rid of your briefs,” Zayn tells him, eyes snapping back to Harry’s. There’s a lighter ring around his usually dark irises, and Harry shifts closer on instinct to get a better look. “Unless you want to ruin them.”

So close and with Harry’s new eyesight, it’s easier to see the imperfections that Zayn’s beauty usually distracts from. The slightest nicks in his skin – probably from childhood chicken pocks, if Harry’s own are anything to go by – the untamed eyebrows, the scraggly stubble that tells Harry that Zayn can grow facial hair, he just hasn’t had much practise in maintaining it. Harry wants to reach out and let the pads of his fingers make contact – he wants to feel the bumps and the ridges and the uneven eyebrows; he wants to make these things a reality instead of just a moment dreamed up in this fantasy novel he’s found himself in. Zayn fits in perfectly; and it’d be nice to confirm that he’s not a mirage, an oasis in Harry’s subconscious. Maybe Harry’s lying in a ditch somewhere, close to death; starving, dehydrated, bloody and likely broken. Maybe he’s cold and shivering and thinking of all the ways he could be alive, if only things were different.

Zayn’s stillness throughout Harry’s assessment catches his attention. They must only be a foot or two apart now. The air between them becomes heavy; Harry can taste the rain in his mouth despite the fact they’re both still dry. Harry licks his lips, swallows, opens his mouth to say something – to explain why his thoughts are tinged with resignation, maybe – when Zayn simply turns away. Harry can’t help but let his eyes linger over Zayn’s hips, over his bare skin. The tattoos are everywhere, and Harry has to remind himself where he is, who he is, and that touching is completely out of the question even if it’d bring him back from this vague premonition of the end.

It’s close to complete darkness now – out here in the country, the light pollution is minimal. Instead of feeling tired, like he’d be wont to do at around nine o’clock at night after a day spent outside, Harry feels jittery and unsettled. He feels like he’s got insects crawling all over his skin, his blood pumping fast and fierce inside his heart. Harry clenches his fists so hard his blunt nails feel wet. The insects dig in, wriggling their way through his body and taking shelter in his very bone marrow.

He looks to Niall then, who breathes heavily on his hands and knees in the dirt. Zayn crouches next to him, fingers running through Niall’s sweaty brown hair and his voice calm and level in the face of the long night ahead.

“Remember that day Liam brought Sophia to meet us? He was sweating so badly he dropped every glass of water he poured for her.”

Harry looks above him, sees the clouds slowly drifting away from the white light they’re hiding, like he’s at the theatre and the full moon is the main event. He keeps looking, even when he can hear the grunts of his pack, the splinter of bone.

He stares at the clouds, counting the time it takes for them to part so that he can meet his beast.

“ _Louis,_ ” Zayn snaps, though it’s not in anger. Harry can’t help it – he drops his chin, eyes searching for the man. But he’s over by a nearby tree, and his head is careening into its bark rhythmically, blood dripping onto his cheeks.

Harry twists to look back to Zayn, who leaves a panting wolf on the forest floor to drag Louis from the tree, cradling his dripping face in his tattooed hands.

“Niall,” Harry starts softly, and the fear barrels into him then, causing him to stumble forward, falling to his knees next to his friend. “ _Niall._ ” The wolf whimpers, its grey coat damp with spots of blood – like it coughed on itself in pain.

He doesn’t know what to do, where to touch. Instead his hands hover, trembling above the wild animal, his instincts telling him to run for his life. It’s huge, is the thing – _Niall_ is huge. He’s likely as big as Harry, and his thick fur makes him seem even bigger. His canine head drops onto the ground, whines escaping him – Harry wants to touch, to console, but the glint of teeth makes him stop, his lungs burning with the effort of calming his racing heart.

 _Listen to it beat,_ his Mum’s voice sounds in his ears, her soothing tone relaxing the tense muscles in his neck. _That means you’re alive, baby. You’re alive and everything is going to be alright._

“It’s okay,” Harry murmurs, pressing his face into the soft neck of the wolf before him, breathing in the earth and the unique musky smell he immediately identifies as _wolf, beta, pack._ “You’ll be okay.”

 _It’ll be okay,_ he thinks, hoping they can all hear him; that his thoughts push out of his head and into the trembling body beneath his hands.

It comes at him from the side, a force so strong he’s flung a metre or two, panting up at the sky. It’s all flashes then – the struggle to get up from his back, his paws uncoordinated; the yearning in him to curl in on himself, his tail between his legs; the fear that grips him when his Alpha bats away the aggressor, growling enough for the both of them as Harry leans into _beta Niall,_ now standing weakly.

It’s about all he can remember when he wakes, naked and filthy on the forest floor.

Squinting up at the sky, Harry feels the warmth of the summer’s rising sun on his side, his left arm numb underneath him. He frowns, closing his eyes against the light and trying to recall what happened in the past twelve hours. There was the turning – that’s clear enough – and then Louis bowling him over with a growl. Zayn had been there, Harry knows. In front of him, protecting him. Niall was weak, and Harry was letting him rest against his flank.

There’s a lot of nothing after that, like Harry’d simply fallen asleep and woken up without his briefs after a hard night out, tired and sweaty and in desperate need of a shower.

“Here,” Something lands on him. Harry blinks open his eyes to see Niall above him, head blocking the sun that seeks to shine through the trees. On Harry’s lap are some shorts and a t-shirt; the clothes he’d put in the garbage bag in the clearing with the others before last night. “Might want to get dressed. Your arse ain’t that beautiful, mate.”

“Shut up,” Harry mumbles, lifting said arse to get the shorts on him. He stands, shouldering into the t-shirt and coming out the other end with hair in his eyes. He shakes it out with a distracted hand, gaze focusing on Niall who stands a metre away, smiling as if he’d like to say something. “What?”

“S’nothing,” Niall answers, shrugging. He inches closer, though, and Harry puts out a hand to wipe off the dirt on his neck without a thought. Niall tilts his head curiously, and Harry’s hand freezes when he realises exactly what he’s done; a touch so familiar they ought to have known each other for years.

“Thanks,” Niall says, and his voice isn’t infused with its usual lightness; it makes Harry want to squirm, roll his eyes with a reluctant smile.

Niall’s not saying thanks just for this.

“Breakfast?” asks Harry, dropping his arm and turning toward the direction of the house; the other two are nowhere to be seen, and Harry thinks maybe Niall waited for him.

They walk side by side through the trees, Niall jostling him once or twice with a grin. He dips a hand into Harry’s hair and messes with it when they reach the back of the house, before increasing his pace to bound up the steps and right through the open single-paned French doors.

A peculiar sensation overcomes Harry right then, like maybe he’s nervous or waiting anxiously for something. Either way, it seizes his gut and makes his palms clammy. It feels like he’s about to go into an examination room for his A-levels, or hand in an assignment late at uni.

The house is a little warmer than outside when Harry steps through the doorway – though it’s not like that matters much to any of them these days – and so he finds himself pushing his hair up and away from his face to cool down. He enters the lounge room where the others have congregated, surprised they’re not scoffing down breakfast in the kitchen. His own stomach rumbles loudly in commiseration.

There’s a spot open on the sofa next to Niall, who’s got his dirty feet up on the coffee table, head lolling languidly on the sofa’s back edge.

Zayn sits on the other side, however; but Harry finds he can’t much think about it. His nerves increase until he’s landing heavily next to Niall, their knees touching. He doesn’t register what he’s doing – much like in the forest – until he’s done it, the base of his skull resting on Niall’s shoulder, the latter’s arm curling around Harry’s shoulder. His gut unclenches, a silent sigh of relief running through him.

If he took the time to think more closely, Harry’s sure he’d know what this is, what his body is telling him. Flashes of Niall’s whimpering wolf accost him, the blood on his grey coat stark in Harry’s memory, vivid enough to imprint onto the backs of his eyelids like he’s decided to tattoo the image there himself.

There’s a gentle brush against his left wrist. Harry shifts to look and sees Zayn’s fingers pressing down lightly.

“Alrigh’?” He asks, and the remainder of Harry’s nerves leave him in a flurry, his body sinking into the ratty sofa like he’s just been given a shot of Morphine, or a muscle relaxer.

He turns his hand over in response, loosely cradling Zayn’s palm and closing his eyes on the next satisfying inhale. He’s tired but his skin feels too exposed, a livewire ready to spark. He doesn’t want to relax, doesn’t want to let his guard down; he can’t help but feel it, though, the underlying connection between all of them. He can visualise the thread that tethers him to Louis, as thin and as fraying as he’s sure it is. Zayn’s is the focal point, though, tying the four of them together in a way Harry’s only ever imagined in his romantic comedy fantasies. Soulmate-worthy, he might gander.

It frightens and excites him in equal measure. Frightens, because Harry still doesn’t know these people; they essentially kidnapped him, forced him into this life of the supernatural and restricted his freedoms. But he can understand it better now, knows that the connections would be cut loose if he left without strengthening them first. The excitement makes his brain wake up, his survival instincts resting for the first time since he was bitten; because Harry’s only ever dreamed of something like this, in those dark moments coming home from a night out with his friends to no ‘get home safe’ text, or even a follow-up the next day when everyone’s sober. Harry likes his friends – that’s why he’s friends with them – but they’ve never been the kind he imagined growing old with, the kind he’d keep past a good time.

 _This,_ though. _This_ is more permanent than he ever thought possible. The selfish, greedy, desperate part of him wants to cradle it close to his chest, keep it safe inside his ribcage until his last breath leaves him.

But then he remembers what he had to sacrifice to get here, the emotions that have been thrust upon him: wanting these people to like him despite his own refusal to cooperate, the need to reassure them until they’re smiling again, the draw he feels to Zayn after everything he’s done.

He opens his eyes at the reminder, catching Louis’ hard stare. He swallows heavily, removing his hand from Zayn and sitting up, Niall’s soft grip dropping from his left shoulder.

“Louis,” Harry starts, biting at his bottom lip nervously – the sharp stare the man in question sends him makes him falter a little, despite Niall’s encouraging knee-knock. “Err, are you alright?”

It sounds stupid, even to Harry. Half-arsed, blasé. He tries not to wince at the darkness that passes over Louis’ expression, like he was waiting for exactly this moment but the reality of it still riles him.

“Just fine and dandy, Harry,” Louis answers, and Harry lets his teeth dig more deeply into his lip at the tone, clearing his face of a frown because any fresh indication of his discomfort seems like it’d be the beginning of a rather ugly row.

“Louis,” Zayn warns quietly, and though it’s a low murmur it seems to do the trick – Louis huffs out an exasperated breath, turning away from the three of them and looking out the window at the foggy morning, the dew on the blades of grass out the back glinting in the sun.

“Reckon it might be your turn for breakfast, Haz,” Niall announces, and the cord that felt taut between them seems to loosen, at ease with Niall’s Irish brogue. He claps a hand on Harry’s right knee, standing and looking down at him expectantly.

Harry can’t help but run with it – he needs out of this room, with its stifling air and ominous undertone.

“I’ll help,” Zayn says, and Harry twists slightly to look at him, _feeling_ not so much as knowing his eyes peruse Zayn’s expression, like he’s been dropped into an alternate universe that has Zayn talking to him and Niall smiling and Harry feeling something old that’s been buried deep in his chest unfurl, Zayn’s fingers brushing the sliver of skin at Harry’s hip between his t-shirt and shorts–

Standing quickly, Harry coughs to hide his reaction – though there’s likely a pinker hue to his cheeks – and nods, shifting to move into the kitchen.

“Easy,” Niall murmurs, and Harry doesn’t turn back – doesn’t need to, to know that Louis had his mouth open ready to say something that would probably send ice flooding through Harry’s muscles, a way to have him halt in his strides toward the kitchen. Harry doesn’t know Louis very well, but something in Harry tells him a verbal spat with the shorter man wouldn’t be pretty.

“Are you–” Harry starts, casting his eyes around the kitchen for a place to begin. Zayn comes up behind him, his torso right up against Harry’s like they’re locked in a closet together playing something as trivial as Seven Minutes in Heaven.

Harry tries desperately not to let his mind wander off in that direction.

“Are you joining us, then?” Harry manages, biting the inside of his right cheek as a distraction. When he receives no answer, he turns to see Zayn with a questioning look in his eye, his head titled only slightly. If Harry let himself, he’s sure he could liken it to a moment from his fractured memories – a moment where Harry found something interesting, where he looked up as if to find someone; a moment where eyes unlike theirs met and something ran down the back of Harry’s lupine spine.

“We don’t–” Harry looks around again in lieu of his slip-up, deciding the fridge is his best bet, “None of you have bacon, when you’re at breakfast.”

“Yeah,” Zayn answers, and he’s leaning against the counter now, with a delicate wrist resting on the wood, not far from Harry who’s chewing his lip at the state of the fridge, “I’m Muslim. We don’t eat pork.”

 _Oh._ Harry had not – well, he hadn’t thought of it.

“Right,” acknowledges Harry, blinking owlishly into the ice box’s insides, “That’s– I mean, bacon’s not that great, really. Makes me gassy.”

Zayn’s eyebrows shoot up faster than Harry’s stomach sinks, and that’s impressive.

“Eggs?” Harry suggests before anything else can be said on his bowel movements. “Toast? I could make a ratatouille, like you did, or do beans and sausage. No one’s Hindu, are they? We could go full vege and just do grains and salad or somethin’–”

Zayn’s smiling, causing Harry to stop, completely and utterly stunned by it.

“S’not a test,” Zayn tells him, mouth turning down at the corners to fight his growing grin, “Whatever you want is fine.”

It’s probably the longest conversation they’ve had – and about breakfast, of all things – yet Harry feels a certain warmth spreading through him when Zayn shows him the location of the frypan. He lets his eyes take in the person before him – properly for the first time without fear and anxiety and hate and desperation colouring his vision – and tries not to forget about what brought him to Zayn in the first place.

 _Alpha,_ something urges in the very depths of his subconscious. He can’t label it – not right now – but it sits there, lying in wait and perfectly content to let Harry figure it out on his own. Like it knows it’s only a matter of time.

Harry doesn’t realise this – can’t possibly, given it’s his subconscious – but biting down on a smile when Zayn almost drops the butter with a “Whoopsy daisy,” gives him an inclination; Niall grins right back as he enters the room, a revived Louis in tow.

“Looks incredible, Haz,” Niall gushes a half hour later when Harry’s piling eggs and beans and sausage onto his plate, along with some brussel sprouts because Harry’s not entirely negligent of his diet despite being a uni student.

 _You_ were _a uni student,_ a voice reminds him. Harry twists his lips, trying to hold back a frown. It’s best not to linger on those kinds of thoughts – not when the others could tune in, if they wanted.

Best he can understand it, it’s more of a feeling than actual translation of thought – the headaches Harry’s had, the uncomfortable sensations… these things were symptoms of the fact he was inadvertently hearing some kind of mind feedback, where impressions were rushing in every which way, Harry unused to their loudness and unable to separate them from his own.

Louis doesn’t say anything when Zayn places his food in front of him, though his eyes flick to Harry when Zayn seats himself beside him, their knees brushing and something frantic racing through Harry’s veins, unidentifiable in its urgency.

“Not bad,” Louis says after a few minutes of companionable silence, and Harry tenses without thinking about it, preparing himself for the coldness he can feel at the nape of his neck, the impression Louis is letting him feel, “‘Specially for a newbie.”

Niall shoots him a look, shovelling some more beans into his mouth, though he doesn’t seem pleased about it.

Louis drops his fork, the clatter making Zayn stop eating silently, his own cutlery lowered without so much fanfare. “Seems it’s all coming easy to you, isn’t it?” His piercing blue eyes stare deep into Harry, shocking him in place and refusing to leave him. Harry glances at Zayn, but he’s staring at Louis in a way Harry can’t read, unblinking. “Turned with barely a thought, already shacking it up with the Alpha–”

The alpha in question stands, slow and steady, and simply walks past Louis and through to the hallway, into the lounge. Like a child chastised, Louis glares down at his barely eaten plate mutinously for about ten seconds before he gets up, chair scraping against the wooden floorboards with an unholy screech as he whirls around and comes as close to stomping out of a room as Harry’s seen an adult reach.

Niall clears his throat, and Harry whips his head to him in surprise before exhaling shakily.

“Feel that?” Niall asks, and he gestures at the nape of his neck with an empty fork, “S’not usually so bad, but that’s always Louis. Loves to niggle at the back of ya head.”

Harry thinks of the pounding ache beginning to spread to the front of his brain, and wonders whether it really is like this with Louis.

“I don’t know what to do.” Harry admits, because Niall seems to understand. At least, he does _now._

“There’s nothin’ you can do, mate,” Niall replies, shrugging and swallowing a mouthful of breakfast in one go, “You’re new, it’s gonna ruffle some feathers. Takes some getting used to.”

“But _you’re_ fine.” Harry retorts, bringing a naked hand up to pull at his bottom lip in thought.

“Yeah, well,” Niall huffs out something akin to a chuckle, his brown hair looking incredibly mussed in the early morning. It must be just after dawn, considering they likely turned back and woke with the sun. “It’s better than dying, y’know.”

Harry doesn’t. His heart sinks at the proclamation but Niall’s story is known to him, and the fact that someone has to face near death to gain some perspective about someone joining their werewolf pack is pretty ludicrous, he thinks.

 _Werewolf pack,_ Harry repeats silently to himself upon drying the dishes with a tea towel, listening to Niall’s easy chatter as he washes them with hot, soapy water. _Is that what we are? Why is that beginning to sound normal?_

The rest of the day sees Louis and Zayn scarce, like they’re avoiding Harry – but he hasn’t done anything; merely _existed,_ it seems – and so he’s left feeling like it’s that first month again, he and Niall spending their time together mostly in silence.

It’s dark and dreary outside, so he takes to the _Harry Potter_ books, losing himself in their old, dog-eared pages like the magic in that world will find itself in his own, whisking him away in whirls of Apparation to his home in Holmes Chapel, his mum at the hob and Gemma playing 90’s grunge in her bedroom whilst he’s trying to do homework. He misses it, so wholly and fiercely that Louis’ attitude goes from somewhat understandable to downright offensive, the hair on Harry’s forearms sticking up in his anger.

Who is Louis, to make Harry feel so unwelcome? Who is Louis, to act like Harry’s had it easy? Taken from his normal life, bitten and shoved into this supernatural one – it’s been far from easy. Harry’s keeping everything under a carefully pressed lid, because if he lets himself get angry and bitter and all of those things Louis seems to be feeling, then he’ll only be more miserable, more upset at his circumstances.

Harry’s trying to ride the wave, here; but it’s far from _easy._

The thoughts rumble and tumble around his head the rest of the morning, and he’s barely taking in the words of Rowling after a solitary lunch of a ham and cheese sandwich. His stomach reminds him that’s not enough these days – not with his supernatural strength and metabolism – but the stomach pains help distract him from the absence of Louis and Zayn.

It all gets to be a bit much after just a day, however, which is why Harry – in an unusual display of courage – confronts Louis just before bed, his pyjamas so soft they’re making him sleepy and vulnerable.

“What’s your problem?” Harry asks because Louis barely acknowledged him throughout dinner, when the four of them were finally in the same room again. Harry’s proud of the way he keeps his tone level, free of accusation.

“My problem?” Louis sharp tone echoes in the hallway upstairs, and then he’s simply laughing, dry and not at all amused. “Go away, Styles.”

“Louis–”

“Have you _quite_ finished?” Louis snaps, and his eyes flash with something so quickly that Harry can barely catch it. “Because I don’t need some _pup_ telling me how to do things.” His eyes narrow, and he steps dangerously close to Harry, their chests almost touching. The height difference does nothing to quash Harry’s desire to flinch back, but he manages to remain impassive. “I don’t need some _pup_ who turned like the flick of a switch telling me that things are _difficult,_ and that I should be _nicer_ to him.” Louis brings up a hand to push at Harry, not too hard but firm all the same, making his point with a furious glare. “I don’t need that, because I ran all the way home my first moon, wanting to see my family. I ran all the _fucking_ –” Harry flinches this time, eyes going to the floor, “–way home, and nearly bit one of my little sisters. She was thirteen.” Louis inhales shakily, stepping back and looking away like what he’s saying has just registered with him, hit him like a lorry skidding ‘round a corner. “ _Thirteen._ I don’t think you realise what that means. If Zayn hadn’t–” He blinks back the tears, jaw clenching.

Harry can’t feel much past the crushing agony inside him – he can’t think of Louis’ little sister, frightened of her own brother. The monsters under the bed weren’t long thought to be her imagination, and then to realise….

“Not all of us chose this, like Niall,” says Louis, tone thick with emotion, “I know he told you,” He adds at Harry’s open-mouthed attempt to respond, “And he’s the exception, not the rule. So, I don’t fucking need _you,_ ” He spits out, the anger returned in one beat of Harry’s racing heart, “To tell me to understand. I need you to leave me the fuck alone.”

And he twists away, slow enough for Harry to see the way his face falls, the mask gone; but fast enough that before Harry can do or say anything about what’s just happened, Louis’ bedroom door has been slammed in his face.

Harry exhales long and low, trying to ignore the tremble of his hands.

The residual anger at the back of his head follows him into the night; falling asleep is a long and arduous effort despite the early start, and Harry finds himself drifting off to the tick of a clock that reads just past two in the morning.

He wakes with a gasp, jolting in bed. The sheets are tacky with his old sweat, and Harry pushes his damp hair away from his forehead, staring up at the ceiling with heaving breaths.

 _Is this ever going to get easier?_ He thinks to himself, the flashes of Zayn on his human back in the mud, ready to die, at the forefront of his mind. His emotions are all over the place – likely because he’s sharing them with three other people – and it’s making it difficult to compartmentalise any of it. Harry can’t shove away the bad and embrace the good, not when he doesn’t know where he’s putting these feelings. It seems his lycanthropic brain is able to recall memories like they’re happening right then and there. There’s none of the distortion or fade from when Harry was human. Instead it’s all played back in startling, horrifying clarity.

He lies in bed until half past three before he abandons notions of sleep, the memories accosting him whenever his eyes drift towards closed.

Leaving his room in only briefs and a threadbare t-shirt, Harry knows it’s cold but doesn’t quite feel it and is thankful that he’s able to run hot. About the only thing he’s thankful for, with this new life.

The night is silent, even the animals at rest so late. Harry can hear the faint trickle of the creek just over two miles away. The one Niall had invited him to, weeks ago. It sounds tranquil in the dead of night, unlike its opportunistic rush back then.

He wonders how things seem to have changed like they have – how he can still be here, when he was so desperate to escape when it was just Niall. He’d liken it to survival, if he didn’t know better; before tonight, even. But Louis’ strained voice, the way it’d cracked when he’d managed a broken _Thirteen,_ has Harry reconsidering.

He’s not ready to go back. He can’t, not when he might hurt Gemma. His mother. Robin.

Is his happiness really worth the price of their lives? Could he live with himself, knowing he’d hurt them? Knowing that if he hadn’t been so selfish, he could’ve kept them happy and whole in his memories?

The library, with its bay window and comfortable bench, call to him. He can’t sleep – but perhaps the books can speak to him, comfort him. Perhaps gazing out of the large window, the moon’s waxing gibbous shedding light on his face, will provide him with some kind of answer.

Nudging open the door, however, results in an answer he didn’t expect. A figure sits in the shadows, the book it holds spotlighted by the moon. There’s a stillness in the air, and Harry finds himself enraptured.

“Zayn?” Harry prods quietly after a minute, almost unwilling to break the peace of the room.

The scrape of turning paper halts, the silhouette by the window going still. A pause.

“What are you awake for?” Zayn questions, tone low and measured. Harry has the sudden desire to catch him off-guard at least once – this composed front can’t be permanent. Zayn’s a person, not a robot. Harry knows he can smile, and he wishes Zayn would stop acting like he has to be a parent to the three of them, like they’re five years old and unable to grow up. A pack of Peter Pans.

As his eyes adjust, Harry takes in the scene before him; Zayn, turned to the door, his hands splayed over a book on the bay window’s bench. His legs are crossed and there’s a pillow under his arse, blankets and the like sprawled about next to him.

Harry remembers, then, exactly where _he_ goes to bed.

“Have you been sleeping in here?” He enquires, padding into the room, letting the door swing until all it would take to shut it is the exasperated press of a palm.

“No,” answers Zayn, turning back to his book. His hair is messy, sticking up all over the place like he’s be running his fingers through it in thought, or frustration.

“But–”

“Just tonight.”

Harry’s feet take him toward Zayn, inexplicably and without a thought. The thread that joins them feels demanding, insistent. Harry’s tired, it’s late, and he just… lets it have its way. Like an exhausted parent who’s given up on a rowdy child, he finds himself bending down, sitting next to Zayn with his back against the wooden bench, the seat carved out of the bookcases that line the walls.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he admits, like it wasn’t obvious. Zayn pauses his reading again, licking his lips before turning a page, his head shifting to read the newly exposed left side.

“I know,” He replies, so quietly Harry might not have heard it if his breath hadn’t caught, distracted by the lines of Zayn’s face, “I heard you wake.”

The understanding goes without saying. Zayn probably hears everything, being the alpha. Harry imagines he knows when they’re asleep and when they’re awake, just from the rhythm of their breathing, the impressions of their thoughts. In the light of day, the realisation would both embarrass and terrify him.

In the library at half three in the morning, however, Harry sinks more comfortably into the blankets under him, embracing the knowledge that he’s not alone, likely not ever.

The way he woke reminds him why he’s awake, though, and he tries not to let that bleed through their thread. Tries to simply enjoy the moment.

He doesn’t realise he’s closed his eyes until Zayn’s turning another page, and then blinks them open to see Zayn lick his lips again, a glance thrown Harry’s way.

_“Do what you have to do.” Harry’s pale hand looks so stark against Zayn’s chest. Harry presses, hoping something else will break instead of him._

“I don’t know who I am anymore,” Harry whispers into the black night, shivering, “I almost _killed_ you, Zayn.”

“You’re who you’ve always been,” Zayn says quietly, in that matter-of-fact tone he seems to adopt in Harry’s presence. He’s still looking down at his book, as if he’d known exactly what Harry was thinking, what he’d dreamt of. “If I’ve learnt anythin’, it’s that the wolf makes you realise things about yourself you never knew.”

 _No,_ Harry thinks sadly, eyes roving over the sharp line of Zayn’s jaw, the softness of his dark hair. Those realisations aren’t old and blue; they’re brand spanking new and he has to take responsibility for them, like a parent in charge of a troublesome child.

“Then I don’t know how to be me,” Harry murmurs, dropping his head so the base of his skull rests on the bench’s ridge, eyes boring into the ceiling.

“Yeah, you do.” Zayn affirms with confidence, though his volume still matches the tranquillity of the room, of the silent night. He closes his book quietly, and Harry swings his head, cheek resting against cushion, just as their eyes meet. Zayn’s explore his own, darting between them and around, the freckle capturing Harry’s attention most of all. Soft. Child-like. “Most people don’t like who they are when they look close enough.”

Harry swallows, their gazes still locked, his limbs still loose and heavy from the reassurance of Zayn next to him. When exactly he became a reassurance, Harry’s not sure. Somewhere between the dissolution of his own character and the sense that he couldn’t do this alone.

“Change isn’t always a bad thing, yeah?” Zayn says, and he shifts so slightly closer that Harry wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t hyperaware of Zayn in the darkness, like he’s got sonar hearing; as if every sound lends itself to a movement, or a position.

“It is when I’m here.” Harry croaks, squeezing his eyes shut until blobs of morphing colour form, shapes he can follow to distract himself from the conversation.

Zayn doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Harry can feel, deep in his chest, a slight tug.

“I know it feels like everythin’ is different,” says Zayn, and his Northern notes seem especially emphasised this late at night, “But it’s not, not really. It’ll help to remember that.”

It’s frustratingly vague, and frustratingly simple. It’s everything Harry hates in advice. He goes to comment on it, maybe insert a little sarcasm into his response; but Niall’s words come to mind – “ _Give him a break, yeah?_ ” – and he stops himself, opening his eyes and sighing into the window seat’s cushion like that’s response enough.

He stays long enough to feel drowsy again, maybe ten minutes at most in Zayn’s comfortable silence. It’s only when he gets up to leave that it’s broken, a tension Harry hadn’t realised existed shattering without a sound.

“I’ll speak with Louis,” Zayn murmurs into the dark, and Harry pauses at the door. He doesn’t look back – not at Zayn’s fatigued face, his beautiful eyes, “I’m sorry about him.”

It’s the first apology Harry’s received from Zayn, and it lights up his insides at the same time it douses the flame; because it’s long overdue, this apology. Inapplicable, and mediocre. He wants to say something, to let Zayn know exactly what he should be sorry for.

But it’s likely nearing four in the morning, and Harry’s fought enough in the past twenty-four hours.

“Forget it.” He throws over his shoulder as he leaves Zayn’s bedroom for the night.

He ignores the vaguest impression of helplessness that seeps into the forefront of his mind. Instead he burrows more deeply into the covers, inhaling the barely-there scent of saffron and letting his mind settle into it, like the comforting embrace of his mother’s arms.

The next day – or really, that day – is a Sunday. Harry wakes to Liam’s welcoming, hearing the enthusiastic voices downstairs, Louis in particular bugging Liam for something.

“They’re coming, they’re coming, hold on!” Liam exclaims, his voice amused and fond. Harry lies in bed, groggy and out of sorts, listening to the three of them. Their voices, though a reminder of everything that he’s been through in the past few months, serve as solace. When the links between them brighten and light up, Harry can’t help but ease back into the covers and curl up into a relaxed ball, ready for a good lie in.

On the other hand, the enhanced hearing means he’s well and truly woken, because the rest of them aren’t even bothering to be quiet. Harry squints at the room’s clock wearily – _6:34_ – and realises Liam’s in early today.

By the time he makes it downstairs – teeth brushed, and clothes thrown on – he only glimpses Louis and Niall out back, paper in both of their hands. Zayn remains in the kitchen with Liam, the two of them chatting genially over breakfast.

“Good morning, Harry.” Liam greets him when he enters the room, a small smile on his handsome face.

“You’re awake early.” Zayn comments, as if Harry’s not downstairs by eight most days.

“Not really.” Harry replies, heading straight for the kettle. It’s already been boiled – Zayn and Liam seem to have helped themselves – and so he pours an English Breakfast, relishing in its distinctive flavour after his first burning sip.

“It’ll be fine, Zayn,” Liam continues after a pause, shooting Harry a frown, “Don’t worry about it, honestly.”

“What’s that?” Harry interrupts, thoughts consumed by the envelope at Zayn’s elbow, the ink messily scrawled on the front catching his eyes.

“Letters from home,” Liam tells him, before Zayn can say anything. Harry chances a quick glance at Zayn, but he seems neither annoyed or pleased. He’s pleasantly blank, and Harry’s desire to crack him open increases tenfold in that moment. “I don’t have anything for you, of course. But I’m sure, next time…” His eyes flick to Zayn, who does nothing. “Well, if you write to them today I’m sure you’ll get some next month.”

“Letters?” Harry echoes, standing straight from his slouch, plonking his piping hot mug on the wooden counter to his right and springing forward to snatch up Zayn’s envelope.

The ink spells out _Zayn_ , a messy calligraphy that has a flourish to it. Zayn’s mother, Harry would guess.

“E-mail is too traceable,” Liam remarks, as if worrying about being found is a normal, everyday occurrence, “This way I can post from all across England, depending on our – my and Sophia’s – movements. Generally, it takes up to two weeks to get to their destination, so we average a delivery once a month here.”

Harry looks up from the envelope. Liam is smiling at him and Zayn is giving him a calculating look, like he’s trying to work him out. It feels odd that he’s not bouncing off the walls, yelling at Zayn for keeping this from him. But the first thought he has – the first person he thinks of – is Louis.

He passes the envelope back to Zayn and returns to his tea. Grabbing a banana from one of the shopping bags on the floor by the sink, he settles back against the counter and simply listens to the continuing conversation – light, vague, definitely evident that they had been talking about something else before he came downstairs, which Harry would have been privy to had he bothered to listen closely.

It takes him a few hours – because he’s respecting Louis’ space, his wish for Harry to leave him alone – but what Louis doesn’t know is that if someone tells Harry not to do something, that translates to permission in his own, obnoxious mind. Gemma says it’s maddening, but his Mum tells him it’s why it’s hard to stay angry at him; that he makes you think about why you’re mad at all, if things haven’t turned out so badly.

Louis is on the veranda just after lunch, cigarette in his left hand and his letters in his right; papers scrunched and smoothed out in equal measure, it seems.

Harry joins him, hovering just by the door. He hasn’t made a sound, but he knows Louis is conscious of him.

He waits.

“Zayn says I shouldn’t,” Louis begins a minute or so later, answering Harry’s silent greeting. He huffs out a wry chuckle, smoke filtering through the air, “Says it makes it worse, when we turn. Said he did nothing but smoke the first month after he got bitten.” Louis shakes his head, smile gone. He takes another inhale of his cigarette. “Said he nearly killed himself as a wolf.”

“Is that what you want?” asks Harry, a calm to his voice he doesn’t recognise.

Louis glares at him from the railing. “No, it’s bloody well _not_ what I want.”

Harry bites at his bottom lip, shuffling over until he’s got his left hand resting on the bannister, the edge of his hip pushing into old wood. Louis is feet away from him, but he’s never felt closer.

“Then stop.” Harry suggests softly.

Louis laughs, dropping his head with a shake. “It’s not that simple. You think you’re the only one who misses your family?” He turns his head to look at Harry, eyes dark. “You think you’re the only one desperate to go back?”

“I–”

“Of course, you do,” Louis continues, like Harry’s frown and open mouth aren’t indications that he has things to say, “Because poor little omega’s been done wrong by. Poor Harry Styles copped it the _worst_ out of all of us, and he _deserves_ to go home.”

“Listen to me,” Harry starts, ignoring the cruel verbal jabs at his character and trying to _connect,_ “I understand what you’re doing.”

“You do, do you?” Louis snorts, taking another hit of nicotine, “Go on, then. Enlighten me.”

“Punishing yourself isn’t going to bring you any closer to seeing your family, Louis,” Harry says, as bluntly as he’s ever said anything. He shifts closer, his right pinkie nudging Louis’ elbow on the wooden railing. The fact that he doesn’t jerk away is a victory in and of itself. “Punishing yourself is just that – punishing yourself. You can tear at your own heart however much you want, make things harder for yourself because something in you tells you that the reward will be so much sweeter because of it.” Thoughts come to mind of spitting out hate and vitriol, then escaping to his family and being able to say he never stopped fighting, never gave in. There’s a vindication there that he doesn’t want to examine. “I’m here to tell you – it won’t. It never will be. What’s the point in making things harder when they can be easy?”

Louis’ head tilts minutely toward him, his cigarette idle in his slim hand. “It’s not that simple–”

“Of course, it is,” Harry interrupts, though he lets his tone ease, his insistence gentle, “Everything’s that simple if you let it.”

“Is that why?” Louis asks, seemingly out of the blue. He turns to look at Harry properly now, stubbing his cigarette out on the bannister like they don’t all live here. The papers crinkle loudly in his right hand. “Is that why everything’s been easy for you?”

Harry’s bone-tired, suddenly, but he recognises this for the olive branch that it is. “It hasn’t been easy,” He answers, thinking of the persistent longing he has for his family, of the way Zayn won’t give him what he wants, what he needs; of feeling like maybe he has a friend in Niall, even though they’re all his gaolers. “But I’m trying not to make it harder. I’m trying to forgive myself.”

Louis turns back to look out at the forest, the day’s sun ebbing away ever so slowly. Harry mimics him, letting his gaze fall on the rabbit just by the forest’s edge, sniffing about in the bushes. He looks away, though, when he remembers what it felt like to bite into one, floppy and full of blood as it sat trapped in his canines.

“Daisy says she misses me.” Louis whispers, his voice hoarse and entirely raw as he looks down at the letter in his hands. Harry imagines him screaming in the forest, no one else around to hear as he berates himself for smiling at those words, for letting them fill him with warmth. “Says she’s patting dogs again, and that the one who tried to attack her didn’t know any better.”

Louis chokes out a laugh, and then he’s crying silently, tears slipping down his stubbled cheeks and dripping onto the wood at their feet. Harry doesn’t say anything, simply shifts until their elbows bump together. He hopes – Harry doesn’t hold it against him, the last few days – Harry hopes Louis knows.

Later, once he’s gotten ready for bed after a film with Niall – “ _Speed_ is a classic, Haz.” – he gathers himself together, ignores the trembling of his breathing, and picks up a pen.

 _Gemma,_ he writes.

The handwriting is shaky, but Harry doesn’t care. The words flow out of him more easily than ever before, and he finds he’s written three pages by the time he thinks to sit back and take a deep breath.

He signs off after another page, tears smudging some of his words, but it’s all legible.

 _Don’t worry about me,_ he’s written.

 _I ran out of money,_ is his excuse for leaving the bed and breakfast room as it was.

 _I miss you,_ is his consolation.

He’s run out of tears by the time he pens something to his mum and step-dad. The sentiments remain the same, though he adds bits here and there.

_Remember when I used to chase those birds in the yard?_

_Does Molly miss me? We should get more cats._

_I’ll be home soon, I promise._

Harry’s never lied to his Mum – not when it’s mattered – but necessity denotes survival.

He doesn’t write to his friends; Harry’s just trying to keep going, at this point.

 

***

 

The impressions and the emotions and the thoughts clash in Harry’s mind every morning. The first things he hears aren’t his own groggy, drowsy musings of how comfortable his bed is, or how his stomach can’t ever seem to stop grumbling. None of these things accost him in that first waking moment. Somehow, when he’s at his most vulnerable, when the last tendrils of sleep ebb away, all he hears is everyone else.

_Fuck… yeah, El, just like that… god, I miss her…_

It takes him a few seconds of blinking blearily into his room and then he groans, bringing his left arm up to bury his face into his elbow.

“Louis!” he shouts, “Stop wanking off!”

_FUCK!_

There’s a scramble of impressions; embarrassment, fury, the smallest amount of amusement that soon begins to take over everything else.

Louis laughs, and it’s boisterous enough that Harry hears it through his bedroom walls.

“Didn’t know you were into voyeurism, Harry! Would’ve done this sooner!”

“You’re such a wanker!” Harry yells back, his own cheeks a little pink at the insinuation.

“That’s the point!”

Harry groans again, turning over and trying to suffocate himself in his pillow, inhaling a face full of the subtlest saffron which does nothing to help his interested cock.

 _It’s just a by-product. Of course the sexy thoughts are going to be shared as well._ At that thought Harry pulls a face into the cotton of his pillow, turning over to glare up at the ceiling and simultaneously willing his dick to _calm the fuck down._

When he gets out of the bathroom a little later, the quickest abuse of his cock he’s ever done in his life behind him and his hair still wet from his shower, Louis is grinning in the hallway.

“Shut up,” grumbles Harry, rolling his eyes with a smile. They look at each other, something between them settling, and then Louis shoulders past him into the bathroom with a parting slap on Harry’s brief-clad arse before the door closes, Louis’ cackling echoing off the tiles.

It’s been better, the past week – after the letters, it’s been so much better. Not that Harry still doesn’t want to leave, return to his family. That remains very much on the table, even now. He sent off letters with Liam, but he hopes he’ll be there to receive them. The understanding between them, though, is much better; Louis’ found his sweet spot, taking the mickey out of Harry whenever he can with a sharp grin and a loud laugh. Niall just seems pleased they’re getting along, when Harry catches him looking between everyone, with the distant impression of satisfaction tickling behind Harry’s ears.

And Zayn – well, Zayn is as he always is, even if he’s staring at the back of Harry’s head a little more, indulging in a smile when before he would’ve donned no expression at all on his gorgeous face.

That’s another thing, too; Harry’s trying so hard not to let his dick do the talking for him, but it’s been a long time since he was with someone, and whilst all three of them – four if he includes boy-next-door Liam – are attractive in their own ways, Harry knows it’s Zayn he’d let himself imagine above him, if he wasn’t so scared of the others finding out. Zayn, who’d spread Harry’s legs and sink into him in the smoothest glide–

Harry swallows heavily, ignoring the twitch of his cock and taking a deep breath. He has to compose himself before he interacts with the rest of them. He can’t be leaving any sort of impression with them, that he wants Zayn or whatever those feelings articulate to other people. Harry doesn’t want to think about it.

“Where’s–?” Harry starts, interrupting Niall’s breakfast. He’s just got toast that morning, so he’s probably planning on a big dinner later. Some sort of feast, given they’re all eating more than their weight in food now. Gone are the days where Harry would forget to have breakfast or decline a second helping because he’s watching his weight, trying to be healthy. The food goes in and in and in, but Harry is as slim as he’s ever been, his muscles more defined. His body’s come into its own, and he’d be happy about it if he didn’t have the smallest, tiniest bump over his abdomen; an indication of how very much not his body it really is.

Harry doesn’t want to think about it.

“Studio,” Niall manages through a mouthful of peanut butter and toast. He swallows, and Harry waits a moment for more of an explanation. “The greenhouse lookin’ thing out the side. Zayn’s studio. Should be open.”

“Open?” echoes Harry, but Niall waves him in that direction as if to say, ‘find out for yourself’, so Harry goes.

He doesn’t much visit the north-west side of the house, as there’s not much there that’s for him. The main areas sit mostly on the east side, and the upstairs is where all the bedrooms are, and the library. It’s a weird layout, a bit haphazard; but the whole place is like that. Harry would re-decorate, if it were his to do so.

_But it’s not. You’re not even a visitor._

The door to the ‘studio’ is closed, the pastel green paint peeling off with age. The four glass panels that take up the upper half aren’t glass at all, but that kind of plastic they use in school buildings so nothing gets broken. Harry would describe it as frosted, at a stretch. Simply, it’s exactly what he’d expect of a greenhouse door. Old, rickety, falling apart – but designed with the intention of minimising damage, or contamination.

There’s an ancient looking key in the lock, and Harry tries the brass doorknob with success. Unlocked.

Harry’s not entirely sure what he expected. He’s seen it from the outside, but it always felt so distant, like another reality. He’d never expected it to feel lived in, really.

It looks like a greenhouse, but the floor is tiled instead of just levelled ground. All throughout there are easels and canvases on easels. There’s a work station just by the left corner, where paintbrushes and paints sit in buckets and boxes. It’s all old, second-hand. Harry’s gaze swings across the room – past the easels and the drapery – to see that the whole place has remnants of its old days, potted plants hanging from rafters in the ceiling and large ferns twining between the art like they’re installations, and not décor. The roof is wooden, the beams big and imposing – but the walls are French-panelled windows, the white paint aged and patchy. Vines travel across the beams in places, congregating in places to form bush-like structures. The whole room is very green, very white, and entirely exposed to the sun. Small spotlights seem to have been installed along the beams, and Harry knows that if he were to turn on the lights at night, it’d really feel like the whole room was one big art piece.

Music plays softly in the background from an iPod dock, the white cord now grey with grit and falling onto the dirty, white-tiled floor. It’s plugged into a circuit breaker plug, large and bright yellow by one of the windows. A last-minute set-up, probably; Liam’s best attempt given the way this room’s been transformed into something entirely unrealistic given its initial purpose.

Zayn sits on a rusting metal stool – much like the ones in Harry’s adopted bedroom, though more damaged – in front of an easel, the sloping lines of a child’s face drafted onto the canvas. His clothes are too large for his slight frame, and Harry has the sudden and inexplicable urge to come up behind him, push the paint-speckled, threadbare white t-shirt off of Zayn’s tattooed shoulder, and _bite._

“Niall said I’d find you here.” Harry croaks, and Zayn twists slowly in his chair, palette in his left hand and large brush in his right. There’s a smudge of orange paint on his chin, and his hair is swept off his face like he wet his fingers and styled it himself. Harry doesn’t know what else to say to all of that.

Zayn’s eyes follow him as Harry gets further into the room, his socked feet sliding on the tiles easily. He lets his hands float over some of the ferns as he walks, grabbing a spine or two to feel between the pads of his fingers. The sensations are almost ticklish with how well his brain is perceiving now that everything is heightened, the lupine senses something he’s still not entirely accustomed to.

“What is it?” Zayn asks quietly, and Harry realises the music is something classical, no lyrics to it at all. It’s strangely calming, and he finds his shoulders relaxing of their own accord, the others in his head settling down as a result of some sort of domino effect.

“I–” Harry frowns, unsure why he needed to see Zayn at all. It’d just felt so normal to ask, and he hadn’t thought to question why Niall figured he wanted to see Zayn with his own eyes.

Harry’s stomach churns a little at the realisation, his left palm coming up to hover at his hip, his abdomen.

“You paint?” Zayn asks, and Harry snaps out of his growing blind panic, heart stuttering at the address.

“Err,” Harry mumbles, trying to find his bearings. He reaches up, steadies himself against a covered easel, “No. Not at all. Tried once, a few years back. It was a bit rubbish.”

Zayn smiles, giving a short chuckle as he ducks his head. Harry can’t help but stare, eyes roving greedily over the quirk of Zayn’s lips, the slight crinkles by his eyes. His whole demeanour softens, and Harry bites back the flirtatious compliment that comes to him almost as soon as it does, refusing to fall into Zayn’s Venus flytrap.

“No one’s rubbish,” Zayn remarks, turning back to his painting and tilting his head, “S’just practise, really.”

“Yeah?” Harry chokes out, exhaling shakily. Zayn shifts to look at him again, eyes sharp.

“Yeah,” murmurs Zayn, and Harry hears it right down to his very bones, looking away and out of the windowed walls so he can compose himself. The outside looks warped, the sun glinting off of the glass giving everything a faerie-like aura.

“Hey,” Zayn says, and Harry didn’t notice him stand, walk over. They’re feet apart now, and Zayn’s smaller stature means nothing when he’s pinning Harry with the kind of gaze that he is right now; all-consuming, all-knowing. Harry’s breath is trapped in his throat.

Zayn’s strong hand comes up, covers Harry’s over the edge of the easel. He rubs at the back of it, makes Harry’s fingers go numb and limp. Their arms drop, and it takes Harry a moment to realise they’re holding hands; when he does, he pulls away. It’s slow, though, the drag of Zayn’s touch electric and dangerous.

“I come here when I don’t want to think anymore,” Zayn tells him, and his eyes are warm, understanding.

“Even–?” Harry rolls his wrist at his shoulder, trying to somehow indicate ‘with them, with lycanthropy, with never being alone?’ into one gesture.

“What are you thinking about, right now?” Zayn asks him, a paint-covered hand coming up to scratch at his jaw. Harry’s eyes follow it, wondering how Zayn can be so composed when he has all of this in his head.

“How I never thought I’d be here.” Harry says, because that’s the only thing that’s making sense out of all of the thoughts trying to take precedence.

“Harry,” Zayn murmurs, and this time one of his palms cradles Harry’s elbow, burning something there that Harry won’t soon forget, “ _Right now._ ”

Harry looks between Zayn’s eyes, trying to figure out what he’s saying.

“What are you saying?” Harry whispers.

“Better,” Zayn compliments, and Harry frowns, “Your thoughts – you need to focus them on one thing. One question. One idea.” Zayn pulls his elbow away, and the rest of it comes rushing back in; what’s he on about? How is Harry going to navigate this? Why can’t he hate Zayn like he knows he should? Why is Niall obsessed with that annoying Justin Bieber song?

“The rest will fall away,” explains Zayn, raising his eyebrows like he knows what Harry is doing, “ _Listen,_ Harry.”

He listens. Piano fades in, soft and slow and sweet. Almost like a lullaby. He closes his eyes, feeling the dent between his brow as he tries to figure out what piece this is; his classical music knowledge isn’t really up to scratch, but the melancholic melody is so familiar he feels like he should be able to rattle off the composer in a matter of seconds.

“You think too much,” Zayn comments, and Harry opens his eyes to see him back near his easel. Harry hadn’t heard him walk away at all. “How can you think an original thought when you’re thinking about all the other ones coming your way?”

It shouldn’t make sense, but Harry doesn’t hear Niall or Louis. He hears the music and he hears Zayn’s voice. That’s all. It’s not like he hears much of Zayn normally, but now there’s nothing. It’s just him and the greenhouse and Chopin.

_Chopin! Of course._

“How come Louis doesn’t visit?” Harry asks, mind racing at the possibility.

Zayn snorts, and even that is attractive. “Louis doesn’t exactly appreciate the serenity of the art space.”

Harry pulls a face, mouths ‘serenity of the art space’. Zayn’s eyes crinkle only slightly in response, a twitch to his lips.

“Louis reacts,” he explains, picking up the paintbrush again. He makes a few strokes, rears back to see it from a greater distance, “He doesn’t absorb, like you do. I realise that now.”

He seems thoughtful, and then his head swings Harry’s way, and he admits, “I gave him all my comics, instead,” His expression loosens into something a little less contrived, “He seemed to like that.”

This little titbit about Zayn – _comics? I never would’ve…_ – is something Harry steals away, packages up into his traitorous heart to take out at night, thoughts toppling over each other in their eagerness to be heard.

Right now, though, he tucks it all away, his throat suddenly thick with emotion.

Harry’s had his doubts about Zayn but looking at the soft edge to his features now, the nostalgic tilt of his head and the fondness in his distracted gaze; Harry knows that Zayn cares about Louis. About Niall. Maybe he even cares about Harry, as much as someone could care about a relative stranger.

Stranger is such an easy word to use, Harry knows – it’s easy to say Zayn’s a stranger when Harry’s homesick and tired and wants to leave. But it’s much harder to face the reality: that they’re bound by more than just shared circumstance, and that Harry doesn’t see him as a stranger, actually. Not at all.

 _Alpha,_ that faraway voice says again, and this time Harry hears it, swallowing that emotion back down and ignoring the pull of his gut.

“What are you painting?” Harry asks, clearing his throat and moving closer, seeing the lines that make up a young face and letting his curiosity overtake his thoughts, be his focus.

“S’my sister,” Zayn answers, and his smile gets a tad wider, “She’d probably hate it. Been a while since I saw her, but she sends pictures. Hard to imagine her grown up a bit.”

Being greedy for information inspires Harry’s next question. “What’s her name?”

“This is Safaa. But there’s Waliyha and Doniya, too.” Harry’s eyes take in Safaa’s dark eyes, squinting up at him, her mouth twisted in dislike. Already he knows she’s stubborn, but playful. Already he feels like he knows her just that little bit. “S’not done, though. Nowhere near. Doesn’t have to be, really. I just like remembering them like this.”

Harry knows enough for that – he _did_ study art history, at one time; but his curiosity consumes him, and he’s opening his mouth right as Zayn huffs out a laugh – an actual _laugh_ – and points over to the other side of the room.

“That one’s done, if you like.” Like Harry’s not already half-way across the room and ripping off the paint-flecked sheet that covers the large canvas.

It’s like nothing Harry’s ever seen before.

Breathing heavily from the quick, exuberant action, Harry stares at the painting. The man’s features are both soft and sharp, his hair full and thick, his eyes so familiar Harry feels like he knows the man. He’s looking off to the side, his handsome face shrouded only partly in shadow. It’s a chaos of colours behind him, swirling until Harry’s eyes follow back to the man again, his aura imposing but comforting at the same time. Magnetic.

“I don’t know him,” Harry states quietly, tilting his head, “But I should?”

“No,” Zayn answers, and Harry twists his neck to look back at him. He’s got a curious look on his face, eyes squinting only slightly. “That’s my Dad. That one’s just for me.”

_I just like remembering them like this. That one’s just for me._

All of this, like nothing Harry’s seen before.

Harry thinks of Don Quixote, then. _When a painter wants to become famous for his art, he tries to copy originals by the finest artists he knows._ The irony of it all is that Zayn doesn’t want for fame, or notoriety. Zayn doesn’t want to be known as someone kind, or great, or talented. Zayn just wants to be. He wants to exist, and he wants to do so in a way that allows him his freedoms.

Harry envies him so completely in that moment – that he’s uncaring, first and foremost, but then that he feels free at all.

The focus leaves him, his curiosity flattened. Harry closes his eyes and inhales deeply, trying to remember his place in the world outside of this small house out in the wilderness.

Turning, his eyes sweep over the rest of the room; the plants that look like they need a little love, the pile of pillows on a wicker chair by the biggest pot plant in the room, Zayn with his back to Harry again, dipping his brush in water.

His shoulders are tense now, Harry can see, but Zayn manages to come off nonchalant in his vocal delivery. Harry would’ve believed him, if he hadn’t learnt to use his newfound lycanthropy to his advantage.

“There’s a spare key,” Zayn tells him, licking his lips absently, “If you want.” He adds, like Harry wouldn’t understand otherwise.

“I want.” Harry replies, and then the weight of the old key in his palm, Zayn’s own pressing into his, has something else pressing into his chest, desperate and screaming.

He leaves Zayn in the studio, on edge the rest of the day. He tries to settle, _Don Quixote_ in his hands, but he’s itchy all over. He ends up in briefs and nothing else on the lounge, ignoring Niall’s amused smile and the roll of Louis’ eyes.

“Funnily enough, you’re not Rose and we’re not Jack, you twat,” Louis snarks, but the glint in his eyes tells Harry he’s joking, “We’re not goin’ to draw you like a French girl, not even Zayn. Cover up.”

Begrudgingly, Harry pulls on sweats and a t-shirt before dinner. He was right in his earlier assumption – Niall’s cooked them a virtual feast, seemingly with the help of Zayn considering it’s edible.

Beef pot pie, roasted vegetable salad, an abundance of lettuce, a mountain of potato bake, yoghurt-based side dishes, a large bowl of scented rice, a big pot of spicy curry; Harry’s nose is assaulted with the smells, and his stomach grumbles so loud that they all stop serving themselves to look at him.

“Sorry,” He mutters, fiddling with his cutlery.

“Can’t blame ya,” Niall says, and everyone returns to action, “Nearly ate the whole thing meself whilst cookin’ it. Don’t know how you do it, Zayn.”

Zayn doesn’t say anything, but Harry catches his eye anyway, sees his mouth twitch like he’s trying not to laugh.

He looks away, lifting his plate to accept the pot pie Niall’s shoving his way. Shifting in his seat, he stretches out his legs, jumping when his feet connect with the other three, everyone a tangle of ankles and toes under the table. None of the rest of them move, though, and Harry sneaks a look at Zayn to see his face impassive again, loading rice onto his plate.

Harry leaves his feet where they are, feeling the itch disappear in the blink of an eye when Zayn’s face relaxes, his eyebrows no longer so firm.

“Do you think you could do the next one?” Niall groans at the end of the meal, leaning back in his chair, “‘Cause I’m wondering whether the rest of you liked it as much as I did, and that’s ruinin’ it for me.”

The room’s silent, and Harry looks up to see Niall and Louis looking at him, the latter with eyebrows raised.

“Oh,” Harry says, catching on, “Yeah.”

He doesn’t think about leaving – how there probably won’t be a next one – or how the knock of their ankles beneath the table makes him laugh, the rest joining in when Louis pokes Niall’s shin sharply and the Irishman yelps.

It gets easier, when he spends time in the studio. It’s not always like it was the first day – in fact, often Harry finds himself sprawled across the wicker chair, head lolling and fingers absentmindedly pulling at the fern’s strong spines as music plays wistfully in the background

Other times, like today, it’s silent. A week into this arrangement finds Harry lying on the cold floor, ankles crossed, and fingers intertwined at just about his navel.

His eyes are closed, a pleasant redness suffusing his vision. Harry tries to focus in on one place, chase the gradient of colours; but it’s always too quick for him, this game of cat and mouse he’s playing with himself.

“Tell me a story.” Harry murmurs, listening for a change in Zayn. There’s a slight halt in the shift of his tank top, like he’s paused in his movement at Harry’s demand.

“My granddad died when I was fifteen.” Zayn tells him, and Harry frowns, opens his eyes to look at Zayn so that his head slides against the tiles.

“I’m sorry,” He consoles, but Zayn’s shaking his head, lips quirking.

“Nah, I’m not finished.” Harry closes his eyes again, listening to the cadence of Zayn’s smooth, musical voice as he adjusts back to his original position. “Granddad died, but there was always somethin’ a little off with him,” Harry makes an inquiring noise at the back of his throat, like a hum, “I dunno what, exactly, but he was cheeky, y’know? Always teasin’ my mum and the like. My nan died years earlier, like ten. He said he didn’t want to dwell on her not bein’ around, and like… he always said sometimes life works in ways we don’t always understand.” A pause, a lick of the lips. “Thought he was daft, to be quite honest. How’s death something we don’t understand? People die, and then they’re gone.” Harry inhales sharply at the reediness of Zayn’s last few words, politely ignores the minute it takes for him to keep going.

“But, like, he looked at me sometimes. There was something in his face, something he knew about me that he didn’t want to share.” Zayn huffs out a laugh, though it’s more out of derision than amusement. “Thought it was because he knew I was bi, or somethin’. At first, anyway. Scared the shit outta me.” Harry’s chest feels tight, his breaths short and frequent. “But that wasn’t it. Brought a bloke home when I was fourteen and he didn’t bat an eye. Didn’t realise he probably knew about the lycanthropy ‘til he was long dead, and I was waking up after that first full moon with blood all over myself.”

The ceiling beams look precarious from so low on the ground, but Harry stares at them like they’ll hold the both of them up and out of harm’s way of this conversation, anyway.

“Zayn,” he starts, but realises he doesn’t know what to say.

“Thirteen days after my eighteenth birthday, woke up with memories of bein’ a wolf, of chasing after a stray dog and–”

Harry sits up on his elbows, eyes on Zayn’s clenched jaw, his chocolate eyes darting over his unfinished canvas like it holds the answer for his pain. Harry feels it – not in his head, like with the others, but all over. Like his own heart’s been broken, and he can barely function enough to eat.

“Zayn,” Harry chokes out, feeling his eyes well up, trying to pull at that hurt and turn it into something he can manage. “I’m so sorry.”

“Uni was interestin’.” Zayn huffs, his face clearing as he resumes his strokes, Harry gasping at the sudden relief of his emotions levelling, his breath coming back to him in a gush.

It’s quiet the rest of the afternoon. Harry feels the slightest remnants of pain, and he smothers it in possibility, in optimism. Zayn’s strokes get a little less aggressive, feel softer to Harry’s ears. It takes hours, but Harry leaves when he can’t feel much at all but the warmed tiles on his back and the setting sun on his face.

His head is spinning in bed that night, everything he’s accumulated since June starting to make sense a bit. Zayn’s insistence he stay with them, his reluctance to say much at all in the beginning; the reason he bit Niall, the reason his relationship with Louis seems so unusual. Like they’re both treading on eggshells, and yet neither one of them is prepared to speak gently.

It doesn’t take much for Harry to come to the right conclusions: Zayn turned Louis accidentally, like he turned Harry. Zayn’s the Alpha because he was _born_ into this, not bitten. Zayn keeps everything in check because if he doesn’t, the whole pack’s going to be frothing at the mouth for _something_ – blood, revenge, death. The irony of the metaphor isn’t lost on him.

Niall’s the only one who knows how Zayn feels, to the fullest extent. Niall’s the only one of them who’s accepted this as his life, in its entirety.

Harry absorbs, like Zayn said. He didn’t realise that’s what it was – but it’s why the emotions get the better of him, why he feels the need to balance out Louis, to draw Niall closer, to crack open Zayn. All he wants is the balance, and it’s not just so he can leave, like he initially thought.

Curling up into himself, his knees in front of his abdomen, Harry knows why this is happening. The biology makes sense, and although Harry can’t really think about it unless it’s in its most abstract form, he knows that nothing else can be added to this tumultuous mix until everyone reaches a sort of equilibrium.

The whole thing makes him jittery, makes him shudder in bed every night, lying on his stomach like that’ll squash whatever’s inside him. He can’t stop thinking about it, not when Louis sits him down to a game of cards, cheating the whole time. Niall tries to get him on a jog around the forest, burn off the excess energy; but Harry outruns him, leaves him panting up against a tree after four hours of it.

Nothing eases, nothing works, and Harry feels his gut get heavier and heavier with everything he now knows.

“Niall,” Zayn says on the tenth, pouring himself a cup of tea at breakfast, “Think we’re going to need some more supplies. Might have to get you to go into town this afternoon.”

“Can do, boss,” Niall says, ignoring Zayn’s sharp look at the address, “Shops’re open late tonight, some sort of festival on. I’ll go at dusk!” He flings his arm out dramatically, puffing out his chest.

“It’s not a ‘mission’, Niall,” Louis says, rolling his eyes, “You don’t need a cape.”

“It’s like you don’t take our supernatural abilities seriously, Louis,” Niall says with a sigh, shaking his head in faux disappointment.

“Whatever. I’ll go for a patrol this afternoon,” He eyes Zayn, “That’ll be _my_ mission.”

“That’s the spirit, mate,” Niall says with a grin, lifting his mug of tea up in the air like he’s awaiting the clink of all of theirs. “‘Bout time we all start saving the world.”

Zayn shakes his head in fond exasperation, avoiding Harry’s eyes as he sits down to eat.

So it’s the two of them after six, Niall walking into town on foot with the list Zayn’s given him. Louis takes off a half hour later, complaining about his lack of phone before Zayn reminds him that they keep breaking them.

“Yeah, well–” Louis splutters, finally giving up with a glare and a frustrated shrug before he leaves, grumbling under his breath.

“Fucking _werewolf_ strength. Can’t even have a mobile. Jesus Christ.”

Zayn’s cooked a Bolognese, and Harry can barely keep it down with the way he’s so hyperaware of his stomach, of what sits just beneath the surface. Every time he thinks of it, he lowers his fork and gulps down some water, instead, unaware of Zayn’s scrutiny across the table. It’s silent, the meal, even though their feet rest against each other on the floor, the only connection that remains between them.

“I never told you why I bit you,” Zayn starts, and he drops all pretence of finishing his own meal, one of his hands coming up to play with his earlobe, “But it’s complicated.”

“Everything’s always complicated with you.” Harry retorts meanly, ignoring the flash of annoyance that crosses Zayn’s aristocratic features, but relishing in the reaction all the same.

“You’ll never understand,” Zayn begins, seeming to let it go, and Harry quirks his lips into his glass of water victoriously, “It’s different for alphas. We’re driven more by instinct than anyone else.” He swallows heavily, looking away. Harry watches the overhead light hit his face, the shadow underneath his cheekbone. It’s grossly unfair. “There’s, like,” He licks his lips, turning back to stare at Harry dead on, “A spark in people. We can see that.”

“This sounds incredibly lame.” Harry says, because maybe he can convince himself that this whole thing is just one big joke. Zayn’s jaw clenches. So, he’s serious. Right.

“I saw it in you,” Zayn continues, and he looks down at Harry’s hand, laid down next to his bowl. Almost as if he wants to take it in his own. “I didn’t think twice. Couldn’t think twice.”

The fraying thread of Harry’s patience snaps. _Isn’t it nice,_ his mind growls at him, _that Zayn thought I was special? That’s_ wonderful.

Harry was living his life perfectly fine before Zayn saw his bloody _spark_ and went and nearly killed him. Harry was _fine_ before that ‘special’ became lycanthropy, and he was forbidden from speaking to his fucking _family._

Suddenly, Harry’s had enough. He stands, his chair scraping against the floorboards and making the both of them wince, ears sensitive.

“Sure. Goodnight, Zayn.”

He’s almost to his room, breath heavy, when Zayn catches up with him.

Harry grunts as he’s pushed against the hallway wall, air taken from his lungs in a second. Zayn’s grip is sharp, grinding Harry’s bones together. He jostles Harry’s arm, and Harry looks up from Zayn’s tattooed fingers to his eyes, blazing with something unknown.

“ _Listen,_ ” He snaps, and his strength makes something inside Harry tweak, his brain going into overdrive until he closes his eyes, focuses on the sounds.

But it doesn’t seem to be sound that Zayn is talking about. When Harry’s lids fall, it’s _feeling_ he can sense, not sound. It’s Zayn right up against him, his lungs straining as he fights not to scent at Harry, drop his nose to his neck and breathe him in like a passing rosebud. It’s everything in Zayn telling him to dominate, to growl at Harry until he submits. It’s Zayn pushing back, letting Harry be a person because Zayn’s the one who did this to him. It’s Zayn, his heart, and his honest truth. It’s Zayn, telling Harry that the ball is in his court.

“ _I know,_ ” Zayn grits out, dark and desperate, “I know all you’re feeling is the pain, and the confusion.” Harry swallows thickly, tries to look away. Zayn cradles his right cheek, tugs his face back so they’re eye to eye, lips an inch away from each other. Harry exhales raggedly, his blood rushing in his ears and his hips lifting off the wall to get closer, a subconscious action. “I know it’s clawing inside of you, screaming to come out. You have to let it.”

That makes his blood freeze, his heart beat twice as fast. “Zayn,” Harry chokes out, tears threatening to spill.

“The pack’s here so you don’t have to be alone,” Zayn murmurs, his lips brushing Harry’s damp cheekbone. Harry’s legs are almost out from under him, so they’re at the same height despite Harry’s usual advantage. He shivers against the wall, but he’s not cold. Not at all. “Listen,” Zayn tells him again, and Harry closes his eyes on instinct, “Don’t push yourself down. Don’t hide.”

Harry feels his shoulders fall, his breath go short. The weight of Zayn pushing into him, however slight he may normally seem, makes Harry want to do what he says. He fights it, pushes back, struggles in his grip and tries to ignore the cresting need in him to obey. “Harry,” Zayn reminds him sharply, and their eyes catch despite all the movement. “ _Let it out._ ”

Harry’s eyes flutter closed, the graze of Zayn’s nose against his making his long exhale tremble. The thoughts fly in, unfiltered and broadcast for Zayn to hear and see. Harry knows, now, why he sent the others far away.

 _So scared, just want to go home, don’t know why this happened to me, why they feel like everything, why my family gets further away, what if I hurt someone, what if I live like this forever, I can’t think about it, there’s something inside me, it’s not normal, I don’t like it, but it makes sense, I don’t know why it feels right, that’s what I don’t want, it should feel bad, it should feel wrong, why is this happening, I_ can’t _–_

Zayn pushes in, capturing Harry’s mouth fiercely, his right hand at Harry’s jaw with the gentlest touch. The rush of thoughts swells, crests, and then Harry tips over the edge of that cliff, pushing into Zayn with all the strength he has. It doesn’t match Zayn – it can’t, because Zayn is older and he’s the Alpha – but they stumble back anyway, Harry licking into Zayn’s mouth because _this_ is his focus.

The ache of his muscles – something he thought long gone, though he must have simply learned to live with it – eases, and Harry feels like he’s floating, his lips bruised and raw with every twist of his neck, every change of angle. He pulls away to gasp for air, one of his hands buried deep in Zayn’s black hair pushing them back together a second later, crashing into each other over and over and over. Zayn’s left hand is on Harry’s hip, his right digging into the underside of his jaw and trying to slow Harry down, re-focus him.

“ _Please,_ ” Harry croaks out, too weak to push back in when Zayn has him so firmly in place, the tips of his fingers digging into just behind Harry’s left ear.

“Alright,” Zayn murmurs back, “It’s alright.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry apologises in a whisper, for everything: the attitude, the insistence, the escape attempts.

“S’okay,” Zayn mumbles against Harry’s mouth, taking Harry’s bottom lip between his and kissing it reverently, “Don’t be sorry.”

Harry can’t possibly be coherent then, not when Zayn tugs him until Harry’s the one pressing someone into the wall, his knee between Zayn’s, his thigh rubbing up against him as Zayn kisses him wholly and unapologetically. It’s slow – slower than Harry’s ever kissed someone – and languid in its confidence, the certainty of where it’s heading. Harry’s jaw aches as they continue to kiss, and it’s not until he pulls back to mouth across Zayn’s sharp jaw, lick at his neck, that they move into the bedroom.

Zayn is gentle – so gentle – and he lowers Harry onto the mattress like he’s taking care of a rare piece of art, like he’ll have to pay for it if it breaks. Harry’s breathless, suddenly, feeling the backs of Zayn’s fingers brush his cheek and blinking up at him.

The room’s silent, save for their breaths. Zayn stares down at him – at his no doubt pink cheeks, his glistening lips, his erratic array of curls. Harry can’t take it, not when Zayn looks so bewildered, so shocked at Harry’s presence in his bed. Because that’s where Harry’s been sleeping, he knows. Zayn’s bed. Between Zayn’s sheets. The hint of saffron something he can taste now, right at the back of his tongue.

Zayn leans down, brushing a stray hair from the corner of Harry’s eye as their lips meet, as his tongue laps at Harry’s own.

Their clothes come off, somehow; Harry can’t be certain, just knows that they’re kissing and he feels wet and turned on and he can feel Zayn hot against his splayed thighs. He looks down, sees his cock dribbling pre-come, Zayn’s curving slightly to one side amongst his thatch of hair. Harry almost laughs – looks like Zayn takes care of himself – but then Zayn’s hand has disappeared from the side of Harry’s face and it’s between his legs, his thumb rubbing against Harry’s entrance, already slick.

Harry inhales sharply. “What–?”

“S’ok,” Zayn hums, kissing the corner of Harry’s mouth before dropping his forehead to the line of Harry’s jaw, looking down between them. His voice sounds muffled, but Harry hears it well enough. “Normal.”

Then Zayn sinks his thumb into him, and Harry can’t really muster up much thought about what’s normal for his arse to be doing, because he’s too busy thrusting up into Zayn, their cocks rubbing deliciously before he has to return his hips to the bed, abs twitching with the effort.

“Zayn,” breathes Harry, eyes squeezing shut. He feels Zayn lift his head, senses a strange twinge of smugness that’s not his before his lips are occupied, and Zayn’s replaced his thumb with two fingers, rubbing right up against Harry’s prostate and making him moan into their kiss, mouth getting lazy as his pleasure ratchets up a significant notch.

He’s panting, then, hair damp as he shifts his hips in time with Zayn’s fingers. He can’t think, can’t do anything but grab Zayn’s angular face in his hands and drag him down to his level, teeth digging into his bottom lip and enjoying the bitten-off grunt Zayn can’t help but let out, his fingers crooking until Harry cries out softly, a hand gripping at Zayn’s left hip, nails digging in.

“ _Now._ ” Harry gasps, lifting his hips, whimpering when Zayn moves away. Harry snaps open his eyes, glares. “Stop being a tease.”

“No rush, babe,” Zayn murmurs, and Harry feels his flush spread down to his chest, his nipples hardening so quick he may as well have pinched them.

Zayn does it anyway, his lips twitching in mirth when Harry shudders. He’s about to snap again, get really impatient, when he feels Zayn between his cheeks and lifts his knees up instinctively to give him more room. He prepares for the stretch, the burn, exhaling long and low; but Zayn leans forward, kisses him loose and Harry doesn’t feel any discomfort, or pain, or anything he might’ve expected. Instead, the push feels like more of a drag, Harry welcoming Zayn’s cock with a squeeze that makes the Alpha’s hips stutter, his breath tremble against Harry’s chin.

He feels everything; every ridge of Zayn, every desperate pulse of Zayn inside him. His body stretches without thought, without any resistance, and Harry proceeds to wrap his legs around Zayn, his ankles at the small of his back as he lifts his hips, feeling the slide of Zayn go deeper still.

They kiss, Harry trying not to whimper when Zayn drags his cock back, pushing back in slowly again like he’s trying to get Harry used to the feeling.

 _There’s no getting used to this,_ Harry thinks wildly. He used to like the stretch at first, got off on it. But now that he knows his body doesn’t have to do that, that it can feel every inch of Zayn like his nerve endings are right there, like Zayn’s rubbing his fingers up against him even though it’s his dick inside of Harry and his hips aren’t moving – Harry can’t return from this. He can’t imagine anything else.

“Fuck,” He breathes, cock twitching when Zayn bites as his collarbone, “ _Zayn._ ”

And that becomes Harry’s permission, his insistence that Zayn move, because suddenly he’s exhaling with every sharp thrust, letting himself be heard by Zayn and no one else. Zayn lifts up Harry’s left leg, slots his hips in more easily and manages to push deeper, snapping his hips into Harry so fast that every push feels like a hit straight to his prostate even though it remains untouched. Zayn’s grip on the underside of Harry’s knee is hard, and Harry’s thighs are shaking, his chest heaving as he tries not to come over and over again, eyes squeezed shut against the image of Zayn above him, his shoulders strong and chest damp with exertion.

Then Zayn slows, lowers Harry’s leg gently to the covers and leans in, kissing Harry tenderly, noses brushing up against each other.

“Okay?” He asks, a palm resting on Harry’s collarbone, his thumb caressing Harry’s pulse point. Harry nods, breathless.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, accepting another of Zayn’s kisses, the shift of him inside Harry making both of them moan. Zayn’s thumbs rub at his cheeks, come away wet. Harry’s crying.

“It’s not–” he tries, but instead just leans in once more, letting his thoughts bleed out, his trust be known.

Zayn pulls Harry to him, slow and steady, their hips joined so closely Harry’s not sure where he ends, and Zayn begins, his thoughts a mess of _so tight_ and _so thick,_ the two of them not thinking about anything else, entirely focused.

The grind of their hips together is somehow both better and worse. Harry doesn’t feel overwhelmed by the feel of Zayn inside him, not like before; but the slowness of his movements, the way he drags across Harry’s prostate with every thrust makes Harry fist the pillow he’s got his head on, neck straining as he closes his eyes, head back and cock dribbling steadily, unable to get even a second of respite.

“Kiss me,” Harry begs, opening his eyes to stare at Zayn, licking at his wet lips, “Zayn, please.”

The change in position has Harry’s thighs wide open, Zayn grinding into him even still, their mouths hovering over each other, sharing breath and feeling and everything Harry didn’t realise he wanted from Zayn. They kiss again, and when Zayn’s tongue brushes against the roof of Harry’s mouth at the same time his cock drags across Harry’s prostate, he’s coming with a cry, squeezing his eyes shut and mouthing at Zayn’s jaw, thighs quivering with every thrust Zayn gives after; two, five, six, and then he’s coming as well, palm dropping to the pillow beside Harry’s head and fingers digging in with a rip that sounds faint and distant to Harry’s ears.

He lands on Harry slowly, the jut of his hipbones digging into Harry’s as he lies there, legs spread and hands in Zayn’s hair, petting, comforting, breath returning to him in a rush.

Zayn kisses at Harry’s chest for a minute, lazy and sweet, before Harry softly reminds him, “I know it may not seem like it, but you’re heavy.”

Huffing out a laugh, Zayn lifts his head to place two or three kisses on Harry’s chin before he separates himself, Harry wincing at the loss, still feeling wet and used.

Zayn doesn’t lie beside him, however, not like Harry was expecting; instead, he leans over him again, landing a heavy palm on his cheek and turning his head so he can nibble on Harry’s bottom lip, reverent in his attentions.

Harry sniffles when he pulls away, the only remaining evidence of his tears. It makes him laugh, Zayn smiling at him, eyes crinkled, in return. His fingers won’t stop tracing over Harry’s cheek, his jaw, the shell of his ear.

Harry brings his right hand up, lets his knuckles run over one of Zayn’s spectacular cheekbones.

They lie there, legs tangled, for a good while. Harry’s eyes close, a hum escaping his throat at Zayn’s rhythmic ministrations.

“I’m sorry, by the way,” Zayn mumbles. Harry frowns, letting his eyes remain closed because he’s awfully tired, and Zayn only sounds apologetic, not despairing. He lets his hand drop to Zayn’s mouth though, his thumb resting at its closest corner.

“For what?”

“For making you shift the first time,” Zayn’s lips twist into a self-deprecating scowl that Harry can feel, and then he drops his head so his next few sentences are muffled by Harry’s collarbones, “I thought it’d help, but it only made things harder for you. I’m sorry.”

He has to blink open his eyes this time, gaze at the top of Zayn’s head a little incredulously.

“You did what you thought was best,” Harry says, and Zayn manages to meet his eyes, searching Harry’s own, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” murmurs Zayn, and Harry smiles, feels his dimples make an appearance.

“Then you’re forgiven.” It seems easy, too easy, but Harry thinks, after all this time – the years alone, the fight to reconcile Louis, the struggle to help Harry – that maybe Zayn needs a bit of easy.

“Thank you,” Harry says, trying to make things easier, “For speaking with Louis. It helped.”

Zayn shifts, halting only to search Harry’s face for a few moments before sliding down, his cheek landing on Harry’s breast.

Harry lets his lips turn up in a smile, feeling his heart go warm, his limbs a little heavy. He buries a hand in Zayn’s thick head of hair, twisting and tugging gently at the strands as he lets his mind wander wherever it wants to go, a pleasant and uneventful train of thought.

“Anything on your mind?” Harry asks, when he feels something poking inside his head. It’s easier to see it’s Zayn, now; that he wants to talk about something, but doesn’t know how to say it. Now that Harry’s letting it, the impressions feel less like an intrusion and more like a natural state of being, really.

“I didn’t talk to Louis,” Zayn confesses, “Not in the way you think.” Harry can feel Zayn’s hesitance, his embarrassment. “I told him to stop being so selfish, I–” He exhales, waits until he has a hold of himself, “I wasn’t fair to him, but we don’t talk about it much. He knows how I feel, and I know that he’s one more push away from losin’ it completely,” Zayn’s admission sounds quiet and sacred into the dip of Harry’s collarbone, “I knew everything about Niall before I could even think about it.” He sits up on an elbow so their faces are only an inch or so apart, Harry’s eyes are drawn to Zayn’s lips, the smudge of his inky eyelashes on his cheeks. “You were…” One side of his mouth quirks up, but it’s rueful rather than simply amused. He brings his right hand up to push away the makeshift fringe Harry’s grown since that haircut months ago, “So different. I didn’t know how to deal with you.”

Harry’s heart squeezes at that – at the honesty in Zayn’s voice, but also at the phrasing. Harry wishes he’d been here from the beginning, suddenly, if Zayn has been seeing his friends as people to be dealt with.

“You don’t deal with your friends, Zayn,” Harry whispers into the dimly lit room. Zayn’s eyes dart between Harry’s, his gaze attentive, “Have you ever thought that maybe Louis _wants_ to be asked about it?”

“He clams up every time. I–”

“Of course, he does,” Harry interrupts softly, leaning forward to brush a gentle kiss to the corner of Zayn’s mouth, “Do you really think a boy from Doncaster learnt to talk about his feelings?”

Zayn snorts, rolling his eyes a little. “You’re stereotypin’. Louis’ got sisters. So have I. Give us some credit, babe.”

“Ask him,” Harry insists, smiling, lifting a hand to rub over the stubble on Zayn’s chin. “ _Trust me._ ”

He’s being looked at again – analysed, assessed, considered. It goes on for far too long, but Harry’s always relished in awkward moments when it’s suited him. He stares right back, cataloguing the distance between Zayn’s extraordinary eyes and the gentle slope of his nose and realising that Zayn likely makes the statues of old quiver on their podiums, so anatomically correct he must be.

Zayn says nothing. Harry’s learnt to accept that, at least, and welcomes the nudge of Zayn’s nose against his, the slow descent of Zayn’s lips, and the languid curl of his tongue. Harry welcomes it, as he welcomes everything else.

They kiss until their mouths go numb, until Harry’s jaw aches with overuse. They end up stopping altogether after some time, simply letting themselves sink into the pillows as they share breaths.

He falls into a doze when Zayn’s breathing evens out, the cool of the night air a nice contrast to his burning skin, that pesky symptom of lycanthropy. In Harry’s sleepy mind, he wonders whether it’s the kind of thing that’d kill a human, this body temperature. Maybe he should ask Liam to grab a thermometer, next shopping trip.

Waking with the sun, feeling tired but sated, Harry stretches with a groan before twisting his head over his shoulder, looking at Zayn sprawled on his front, dead to the world. His hair’s all over the place, and Harry pushes it back expecting to be greeted with Zayn’s sleepy eyes, but nothing. He’s fast asleep.

 _First time he’s slept in his bed since you arrived,_ he reminds himself, and decides to let Zayn have his rest, pulling on a too-tight t-shirt and patterned shorts, something Liam had thrown at him last week with a snort.

Downstairs is eerily silent, and he realises he’s the first to wake, the house quiet with dawn as the rest of them sleep.

Getting the hob going takes him a while, chopping up the last of the vegetables before Liam’s due to deliver more tomorrow. The eggs he waits to start in on, knowing how fast they cook. Buttering the toast is easy enough, and the rhythm of it has his mind start up, finally properly alone with his thoughts for the first time in months.

Last night – well, last night was unexpected, to say the least. Harry sees it now, the tension they were harbouring. How every moment felt charged with something he initially identified as pressure to belong, to fit in, to take his role as omega in the pack like a good little werewolf.

He hadn’t realised the way Zayn was stopping that from happening, letting Harry be himself before he was any kind of omega. How Zayn tries his best not to let the lycanthropy rule any of their lives, really. Zayn, who had no one to share his own feelings with, his thoughts locked up tight inside his mind until Harry did what he’d set out to do – crack him open. Though, of course, it hadn’t ended how he’d imagined.

There’s no underlying tension, anymore; no kink in his neck, no niggling at the back of his head. Everything feels like it fits – like Harry’s only ever felt in Holmes Chapel, his sister by his side and his parents across from him, Robin giving him a ribbing about his long hair.

A hand settles as his waist then, fingers pressing hotly into the inked laurels at Harry’s hips. Although surprised, Harry relaxes into the touch, Zayn’s nose skimming up his neck, his mouth hot against the underline of his jaw.

“Morning,” Zayn murmurs, kissing right where he stops, a flutter on the shell of Harry’s ear.

The vegetables are in the pan now, a slight sizzle going, when Harry shifts to the side, turning his head so they’re only an inch apart, dropping his gaze to look at Zayn’s lips. He leans in slowly, face tingling at the barely-there kiss, the memory of last night making him feel hot and a little sweaty at his nape.

“Oi, none of that!” Someone exclaims, and something soft thwaps against Zayn’s back. They both turn, Zayn’s attacker standing in the doorway with his hands on his hips, joggers and t-shirt loose and comfortable. “Heard enough of it last night, you twats.”

Harry can feel the blush bloom in his cheeks but he can’t hold back the smile, scrunching up his nose to try and hide it.

“Don’t look so fucking smug, Harry. Jesus.” Louis groans, plopping himself down onto one of the chairs dramatically, the back of a hand finding its way to his forehead like he’s the damsel in distress in a smut novel. The ones Harry has, embarrassingly, glimpsed beside his mother’s bed in recent times.

“That’s a limited edition,” Zayn states, and Harry follows his gaze to the comic sprawled on the floor, its pages a little bent. “ _Louis._ ”

“And it’s mine now, so I can do whatever I want with it,” Louis answers haughtily, leaning forward to snatch it up off the floor, “You can’t take back a gift, Zayn.”

Zayn sighs like he’s been hard done by, but that’s all – there’s no awkwardness, no tensing muscles. After what Zayn admitted last night, Harry frowns.

“A day inside,” Louis states, looking miserable, “Yippee.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asks, swinging his head to look out the window above the sink, the sun peeking through the trees.

“Smell the air, bozo,” Louis rolls his eyes, grinning when Harry narrows his own at him, “All that moisture? It’s going to storm.”

He’s right. By the time Niall stumbles downstairs a half hour later, clouds have obscured any amount of sun there may have been, and there’s a rumble of thunder once they’re all finished with their meals.

It starts bucketing down soon after, Louis’ feet in Harry’s lap, his small frame sprawled across the whole sofa like he’s Harry’s height, not inches shorter. Harry would complain, maybe, if Louis didn’t keep wiggling his toes along with his eyebrows, grinning at Harry like they’ve got their own inside joke now. It feels important, somehow, that he let this happen. Harry feels responsible; whether it’s for Louis, or for Niall, or for a semblance of balance. The ease with which Louis interacts with the group now has Harry’s chest loosening the vice-like hold it has on his lungs.

“You don’t have any board games, do you?” Harry enquires, shifting Louis’ feet from his lap and ignoring the offended noise the beta makes in response.

Niall groans, dropping dramatically so that his back hits the floor. It inspires the smallest of smiles in Zayn at the action, who pauses his perusal of the comic Louis carelessly flung about this morning to raise an amused eyebrow.

“Louis always cheats!” Niall exclaims from the floor.

“I do not, Horan!” Louis exclaims, sitting up proper on the sofa, glaring down at Niall. “Just because you’re awful, doesn’t mean everyone else is turning the odds in their favour.”

“You can’t cheat at Scrabble,” Harry announces, eyes wide at the interaction, “Why don’t we play that?”

Niall and Louis grumble, but Harry’s been waiting to bring out the board games since he was stuck in this house; just had a few other things on his mind, though, with the way everything’s unfolded. Now, with a calm blanket settling over the four of them, he can properly indulge in the smaller things.

The rain becomes more of a distraction, however, as they get going with the game. It’s so heavy that they can barely talk over it, the roof old and creaking with the weight of the water.

“How in the fuck–” starts Louis, eyes wide.

“Exterminate,” Harry announces, grinning, “Triple word score.”

“I hate this. I genuinely hate this.” Louis mutters, but Harry gets distracted by the shift of Zayn behind him; they’ve all moved places, with Harry sitting between the sofa and the coffee table, Louis on the other side as Niall peers at their letters. Unofficially, they’re a team. Harry’s been playing most by himself, though Zayn sits behind him.

The graze of Zayn’s calves on Harry’s sides makes him wriggle back a little, settling between Zayn’s knees with his own legs crossed, his ribcage burning with promise.

Out of nowhere, there’s an almighty wrenching sound, like the churning of metal in a machine. Harry snaps his head to the right, squinting at the wall as if it’ll give him information about the sound that came through it.

“Doesn’t sound great, does it?” Niall remarks, and Harry turns back to see him frowning at the kitchen. Louis is still glaring down at the Scrabble board, bitter and vengeful.

Harry stands, making his way over to the kitchen doorway to see gushes and gushes of water hitting the window above the sink, the glass looking more like an interior water installation than something protective.

He moves closer, leaning over the basin to look through and up. Above him, a piece of metal seems to have bent; the gutter’s split, and the water is just pouring right into the window. Harry lets his gaze fall, spies the generator only a metre or so to the left of the glass. He hazards a guess that pools of water right next to their electricity source probably isn’t a good idea, even if it’s built to withstand the elements.

A minute of concerned frowning later, Harry glimpses Niall’s darkened hair. He’s gone outside, a hand over his eyes so he can see the damage. Their eyes catch through the window, and Niall makes a motion across his neck as if to say ‘it’s done for’.

Harry turns, meeting Niall in the hallway as he shuffles back inside, dripping rain water all over the wooden floor. He doesn’t seem to care, and Harry can’t quite muster up the effort to worry about the place like this, not when it seems to be falling apart well enough on its own.

“Gutter’s cracked in places,” Niall announces, and Harry can see Zayn peering over the back of the sofa, listening in, “All along the side. Almost falling off near the window. S’not good for the generator, especially if more of it bends like that. Best to replace the whole thing.”

“Alrigh’,” replies Zayn, and he sounds unaffected by the entire situation, looking between the two of them curiously, “Liam’s in tomorrow. He can take a look when the rain eases.”

“Zayn,” Niall starts, his tone the slightest bit hesitant, “I’m not sure it’ll hold.”

“It will.” Zayn assures them, in a way that might seem naïve if Harry didn’t know he’d been living in this place for years before Niall joined him.

“Right. Well,” Niall huffs, shooting Harry a grin, “Time for a shower.”

He plods up the stairs noisily, leaving puddles of water in his wake. Harry frowns at the window, biting his bottom lip worriedly. He wants to be assured, like Niall’s been; but the creaking overhead doesn’t instil a great confidence in him that the house will protect them from the downpour. Not that he has any worries about being caught in it – werewolf immune system and running so hot the water will turn to steam upon touch won’t pose dangers if they’re stranded in the forest – but it’s the books, the electronics, all of the things that have made this a home for the rest of them, that will be destroyed in the process.

“What is it?” Zayn quietly asks when Harry lands heavily next to him on the couch. Louis’ in the bathroom, if his idle humming across the house is anything to go by.

Zayn’s tattooed hand comes up to rub at Harry’s chin, tug his face so Zayn can get a closer look. Harry gently cradles Zayn’s wrist, pausing the action.

“This house is falling apart.” Zayn’s hand rises further, his fingers pushing into Harry’s hair calmly. Harry tries not to shudder, lets his own hand return to his lap, leaning back into the cushions comfortably.

“You don’t have to worry about that, babe,” murmurs Zayn, and Harry blinks open eyes he didn’t even realise were closed to see Zayn looking at him in that way of his; a little calculating, a little amused. There are the tiniest of creases by his eyes, and it’s then that Harry realises Zayn is _fond_ of him, however that came to happen. “That’s my responsibility.”

“Well,” Harry responds, huffing, “You need help.”

Zayn snorts, tugging at Harry’s hair a little sharply in retaliation. Harry tries, again, not to shiver.

“You should go into town with Liam tomorrow,” Zayn says. It’s not an order, like Harry might have interpreted it weeks ago; it’s the way Zayn suggests. He blurs the line between the two with his tone, but Harry can tell, now. Can feel the way Zayn’s not pushing at all, not making Harry’s limbs fidget with the pull to follow those orders. “Get some repair supplies. It’s his birthday on the twenty-ninth, too. He’d never tell you,” Zayn smiles, pushing Harry’s curls back from his face once more, staring at Harry’s pink lips, “Doesn’t want the attention. But we always celebrate. The moon’s on the closest Sunday, so we’ll have something next week.”

Harry hums, leaning forward subconsciously. Their lips are a hair’s breadth away, and Harry exhales on a soft sigh, a whisper ready on his lips.

“Zayn, I–”

“Alright,” Louis announces loudly, raising an eyebrow at Harry when he simply turns his head, Zayn’s nose brushing a cheekbone, “Do you forfeit?”

“Do I forfeit?” Harry raises an eyebrow back. “You must be dreaming.”

He extracts himself from their embrace to continue the game, the slightest of blushes in his cheeks when he thinks about what he’d been about to say.

There’s something about Zayn that intoxicates him; that saffron burns his nose, becomes a cloying taste at the back of his throat when Harry inhales. It’s mesmerising, and Harry wants to lick at Zayn’s skin, right down to his bones, and let his thoughts seep into his veins; something like _I’ve never felt like this._ It’s not enough, not nearly enough; but begging Zayn to fuck into him mercilessly, Harry moaning for the rest of the pack to hear without a care – something he hadn’t really been into prior to this new life of his – isn’t exactly on the table, he thinks.

Instead, Harry entwines their fingers late at night, pulling Zayn into his bed – _their_ bed – with a long, drawn-out kiss. He doesn’t mean anything by it; only to let Zayn know that he doesn’t have to sleep in odd places anymore, can simply let Harry sprawl over him and the bed will be perfectly acceptable.

But Zayn’s finely sloping nose skims across Harry’s shoulder, Zayn inhaling until he reaches behind Harry’s ear, breath hot, before taking an earlobe between his teeth and biting.

Harry lets out the softest of cries. His briefs feel damp, and he pulls away enough, barely sober from Zayn, to breathe out, “Zayn, why am I…” He doesn’t know what to call it; instead, he grabs Zayn’s hand, slides it across his skin – can’t help the shudder, this time – until there’s a finger rubbing against his hole, making him gasp into Zayn’s chest as his head drops.

“There’re stories,” Zayn whispers, and Harry groans long and low when he’s breached, Zayn slipping inside without any effort at all, two of him stretching Harry needlessly, “I only read about it, in the books I could find.”

Harry lifts his head, brings a hand up so he can rub underneath Zayn’s tired eyes, squeezing his own shut when Zayn manages another finger. “Stories about Omegas, how they don’t need stretching.”

Harry gives a breathy laugh – at the ludicrousness of it all, but also because he can’t quite believe Zayn’s talking about _reading_ at a time like this.

“Makes them easier to knot.” Zayn murmurs, and then he’s plundering Harry’s mouth, fierce and captivating in his passion.

“Wait–” Harry pulls back, lips stinging and breath taken from him. He blinks open his eyes, grunting at the shift of Zayn’s fingers inside him, “Knot?”

“You never seen one of those documentaries about wolves, Haz?” Zayn chuckles, and Harry can feel his dick twitch in response, something a little weird about the whole thing but he can’t help but run with it, stuffed full as he is. “The male knots the female, they’re stuck together when they mate.”

Harry swallows. “So, what?” He asks, licking his lips. His stomach squirms a bit, but whether or not it’s bad remains to be seen. “We’re going to…”

His gut turns in on itself.

“That’s sick,” Harry concludes, exhaling shakily, “We’re not– we’re not _animals._ ”

“Turns you on, though, doesn’t it?” Zayn mumbles against Harry’s lips, kissing him thoroughly again, “Makes you wet?”

“I–” But a lie is no good, not between werewolves. Harry clenches around Zayn, cock dribbling pre-come in spades.

“Don’t question it,” Zayn says, and Harry can see the softness of his face, feel the gentle caress of his spare hand on Harry’s jaw, “I gave up a long time ago.”

The words burn on Harry’s tongue – but it’s ridiculous, the feeling. They’ve only known each other for a few months, if that; part of which he spent hating Zayn.

 _Love and hate are more closely linked than you’d think,_ Harry remembers his mother saying, when he told her he hated his sister. This is, of course, different in almost every way. But the words; they stick with him.

Harry comes, before he can think much on it; Zayn’s fingers leave him, and the way they brush inside him has Harry trembling, his cock spurting in his shorts. Zayn’s breath hitches, and then Harry’s pushing him to the bed and unbuttoning the Alpha’s jeans in the span of a few seconds.

“ _Harry–_ ” Zayn chokes out, but Harry sinks his mouth down on him without letting him finish, swallowing down spit and the taste of Zayn as his tongue massages right under the head – back and forth, back and forth, back and forth – whilst his now damp hand circles the rest of Zayn’s length. He brushes against Zayn’s balls a few minutes in, and then he’s swallowing down come as well, feeling the heat of Zayn in his mouth and letting his eyes flutter closed.

He pulls off, panting, his shorts and briefs wet, and Zayn lying on the bed, chest heaving as he stares up at the ceiling.

Harry crawls up on top of Zayn, licking into his mouth as soon as he can, feeling the rawness of his own, relishing in Zayn’s tender touches to his face.

His alpha pulls back, brushing Harry’s hair from his eyes.

“Stay with me,” He whispers, and Harry kisses him like it’s the easiest thing to do; he doesn’t think about whether Zayn was asking him to stay the night or stay forever.

Frighteningly, he thinks his answer might be the same regardless.

He ignores the thought as they fall asleep, now naked bodies tangled under the covers. He still doesn’t think about it when Liam arrives, frowning worriedly at the gutter but brightening when Harry mentions coming with him to town.

“Should bring Lou along, too,” Liam muses, “Might be good for him to get some fresh air.”

“I _do_ leave this dump, you know,” Louis retorts, but his shoulders come up from their slump and he all but skips to Liam’s beat up Toyota, the grey paint chipped and scratched in so many places.

It takes them forty minutes or so to drive from the property to Chesterfield.

“Usually, I make it out to Manchester,” Liam tells him, Louis with his head out the window in the back seat. The irony isn’t lost on Harry, who holds back a laugh. “But, well. Zayn said that’s where you’re from. Thought it best to be safe.”

It makes Harry’s stomach flip a little, the precautions. He doesn’t like it – he wishes he could talk to his mum, to Gemma – but he understands it, at least.

Chesterfield is pretty standard, as far as English towns go. The day’s cloudy, the slightest mist about. It’s damp, and Harry’s curls are rumpled by the time they manage to make it to the Halfords in town. He and Louis are getting a few odd looks – and it’s only when he sees Liam’s got on a jumper and a jacket that he realises their jeans and t-shirt combos probably look a little out of place given the weather.

Halfords is busy, for a Sunday – but Harry supposes that most people work the typical nine to five jobs around these parts, and Sunday would likely be the time the rough-around-the-edges Northern husbands would go scouting out tools and the like.

“Stop looking so fascinated by the humans,” Louis grumbles, the back of his hand slapping into Harry’s sternum, making him huff out a breath, “People are starting to stare.”

Harry frowns, averting his eyes from the amount of people in the shopping complex – the number of stores that seem altogether too bright but still comforting – to see they’re getting a few odd looks. Harry shoots them the smile that always got him the last piece of cake as a child, and they seem to relax a little, give polite smiles back.

“Think they can sense the supernatural,” mutters Louis, eyeing up the people passing them which likely isn’t helping their case, “Don’t think they know it, though.”

“Both of you are wearing t-shirts in ten degree weather, that’s plenty weird,” Liam comments over his shoulder with a snort, “You’re not _that_ important.”

“Shove off, Payno,” Louis says, smirking, “We’re the belles of the ball.”

They find the right tools, soon enough. The guttering is mismatched in colour, but Harry assures Liam – newly photographic memory coming in handy – that its dimensions will fit nicely.

“Good to have some muscle around,” Liam comments, grinning at Harry as they manoeuvre the gutter pieces into the trolley.

“Oi!” Louis cries out, glaring at their human friend, “And what am I?”

“Scrawny.” Liam shoots back across the trolley, smiling as he turns back to the shelves, Louis squawking in outrage.

They make their way to Aldi when they’re done, putting the miscellaneous hardware into the boot of the car like a game of Tetris.

“Think Liam will want some strudel?” Harry asks quietly, holding up the discount dessert as he turns to Louis. He realises it’s pointless, however, because Liam’s on the other side of the shop, holding two cans of sauce in his hands and debating over what seems to be the price but is likely something more finnicky, like the nutritional value.

“Liam will be happy with anything, honestly.” Louis remarks, rifling through one of the discount bins.

“It’s his birthday, though,” Harry replies, putting down the strudel, walking backwards to see what else is on sale, “What’s his favourite?”

He stumbles back a step, though, bumping into a trolley and turning around with an apology on his lips.

“Sorry, sorry,” He gushes, smiling guilty, “I never watch where I’m going.”

“Quite alright, dear,” The woman replies, smiling at him; it dims a little, though, when their eyes catch. Her eyes flit down to the tattoos on his arm, and Harry thinks _Oh. One of them._

“I’ll just be on my way. You have a good day, ma’am.”

“You have the grace of– well, nothing. Everything is more graceful than you.” Louis says, grinning, as Harry walks back over.

“Shut up.” Harry grumbles, pushing at his shoulder. Louis leaves it, though, and leads Harry to the ice cream easily enough. They hide it under some of the vegetables they harvested from the trays near the exit and wait patiently for Liam to drop his stash in the trolley so they can nick Zayn’s credit card from his pocket.

“Hey Liam,” Louis starts, and Harry wonders how Liam seems to be unable to pick up on Louis’ wandering tone, something that immediately makes Harry think he’s up to no good, “Mind grabbing a pack of smokes for me?”

“Louis,” Liam sighs, disappointed, “You know they’re bad for you.”

“But they won’t kill me.” Louis points out smugly, though the snort from the ignorant cashier has Harry tamping down a smile.

“Fine,” Liam reneges, and by the time he gets back – the only one of them with ID to buy the bloody things – they’ve paid and hidden the ice cream amongst the groceries once more, Liam none the wiser.

Liam picks up a few extra things along the way, one of them a bouquet of flowers for Sophia, before it’s declared time to leave. Louis pushes Harry away from the front passenger seat like a child, so Harry’s left to stare out the window alone, ignoring the good-natured squabbling over the radio station up the front. He’s too tired, too achy to bother participating; his head feels a little like bursting, and he can’t stop jiggling his right leg nervously.

“Sore?” Louis comments as they pass by Pilsley, ten minutes from home, twisting to glance at Harry before returning to a normal position. “Yeah. First time away from Zayn will do that.”

“What?” Harry mumbles, rubbing at his irritated eyes.

“Alpha’s the hinge that connects all of us,” Louis remarks, gazing evenly out the front window, “You’re not used to distance, yet. S’gonna make you a bit twitchy.”

Harry doesn’t say anything, focusing on not letting his skull crack open, liquid brains spilling out everywhere.

“Fix him, Zayn!” Louis calls out before Liam’s even put the car into park, jumping out of the vehicle to grab at the bags in the boot, ignoring Liam’s offers to help.

Zayn’s at the door when Harry stumbles into the house, rubbing at his neck in the hopes it’ll ease the strain. The older man takes Harry’s face in his hands, his thumbs digging into Harry’s temples and making Harry groan.

Harry had wanted to help Liam install the gutter, learn a bit more about the house; that idea’s gone, though, when Zayn pulls him into the en suite shower.

He’s undressed before he realises, and then the hot water is pelting into his back, Zayn’s hands massaging into Harry’s shoulders rhythmically, dispersing the tension in his muscles. The contact seems to be helping, too, and by the time Zayn’s soapy hands are running over his body, Harry’s relaxed enough to lean into him, nosing at Zayn’s temple and kissing him once only, soft and lingering.

It’s only later, dressing in their room before dinner and away from Zayn’s tender hands, that Harry realises he had full access to technology in town – there’d been a payphone they’d passed, he’s sure of it. If not that, then any number of landlines in the stores they’d visited, or the mobiles of the patrons.

But he hadn’t even thought of it – it hadn’t once crossed his mind that he should sneak away for a call, contact the authorities.

The realisation makes him cold, but Louis’ words from one of those first days come to mind – _“You’ll hurt someone. You’ll hurt your family.”_ – and Harry knows it’s probably better this way.

It has to be.

 

***

 

“Stop staring at me,” Harry says, muffled into a pillow. He peeks out between the locks of his hair after a minute of amused silence, green eyes focusing in on Zayn sitting on a stool, art journal in his lap and pencil in his hand.

“I’m not staring,” explains Zayn, voice light and, of all things, tender, “I’m studying.”

“Well, stop studyin’,” Harry manages to get out through a yawn, closing his eyes to nuzzle deeper into his warm pillow. The sheets pool at his hips, back and shoulders exposed to the cool morning air; but Harry doesn’t much care, as comfortable as he is.

He falls into sleep again easily, and when he wakes the sun is a fair bit higher in the sky and his stomach is rumbling uncomfortably. Sighing, Harry flops over onto his back, letting the calmness of his first thoughts wash over him.

He meets Zayn in his studio, the artist playing the soft sounds of some foreign band, the words gibberish to Harry, as he paints.

“Stop staring at me,” says Zayn, and Harry rolls his eyes from the doorway.

“Ha ha, you’re an absolute Larry David, Zayn.”

Zayn twists, smiling. “I like to think so.”

“Drawing more erotica of me, are you?” Harry quips, making his way over until he’s close enough to drop an absent kiss on Zayn’s cotton-clad shoulder.

“Shut it,” Zayn responds, continuing his artistry, “I’ve got to make a living somehow, and you’re not it.”

Harry twists his mouth, bringing a hand up to pull at his bottom lip so as to lessen the grin that threatens to take over his face. He can’t seem to stop smiling, lately.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to be inside all day,” Harry comments, turning to look meaningfully outside at the still rising sun, “The rain’s finally stopped, and you’re painting?”

Zayn sighs, long and loud, and then puts down his brush.

“You’re like a demanding child.” He states, staring at Harry with exasperation.

“No,” Harry denies with a victorious smile, “I just know when to utilise good weather, and I encourage you to do the same.”

Harry wouldn’t exactly call patrolling the woods utilisation, but he knows there’s such a thing as compromise, and the firm set to Zayn’s eyebrows when Harry had opened his mouth to suggest other activities felt too stubborn to try for anything else.

“How often are we doing this?” Harry asks, looking around at their surroundings. The birds flit between the trees anxiously, and Louis’ comment about sensing the supernatural pops into his head; maybe he’s right, just a little. It seems silly, but Harry’s heard weirder, and he’s always been conscious of things like auras, or ‘vibes’, as Gemma would say.

“Patrolling? It’s once a week,” Zayn answers, distracted by something. He stops, and Harry stops too, only steps behind.

Zayn crouches, and Harry peers over his shoulder to see the faint imprint of a paw, large and familiar, if the way Zayn’s thinking is anything to go by. The slightest impression of discomfort leaks into Harry’s mind before it’s snatched away so quickly, it might as well have never been there in the first place.

“What is it?” Harry asks, because Zayn’s simply gone silent, eyes roving the forest in thought.

“Tracks,” Zayn concludes, standing once more, “Not ours.”

“How do you know?” Harry asks, brow furrowing as he gazes down at the imprint.

“Because we didn’t come this way last full moon.”

“But–” Harry’s frown deepens, and he looks to Zayn. The shorter man turns, waiting. “You remember?”

“I’m the Alpha.” Zayn simply says, and Harry imagines making fun of this at some point in the future, he and Niall in stitches as Zayn rolls his eyes at them.

“I’ve also been a werewolf for a long time,” Zayn says, smiling now, “You’re a baby, Harry. It’ll come.”

“I’m not–” Harry starts indignantly but stops when he sees the way Zayn’s smile widens, crinkles forming by his eyes. “You’re an arse.”

Zayn just hums, turning back to follow the tracks. They stop by one of the creeks nearby, a slow and quiet thing, and so the both of them make their way back to the house.

“They’re old,” Zayn tells him, rubbing at Harry’s knuckles consolingly, “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not.” Harry replies, but Zayn just squeezes his hand once more, dropping it once they reach the back end of the property, climbing the stairs onto the veranda two at a time.

The rest of the week follows similarly; there are no more patrols, at least, but Zayn softens with every night spent curled up in bed together, pyjamas firmly in place. There’s the snogging sessions in the shower, and a lazy hand-job between them one night when Harry wakes, panting and harder than he’s been in a while.

It feels normal, is the thing. Domestic, even. They all take their turns cooking breakfast and dinner, lunch more of a casual affair. Niall takes Harry around the house, explains that Zayn had installed the generator those years ago, had got a team in to fix the rusted plumbing. The roof cladding he’d done himself, and when Niall had arrived they’d repainted the interiors and re-tiled the bathrooms together.

“Wasn’t that liveable,” Niall had commented, “Zayn was fine sleepin’ in the forest a lot of the time. Alpha can turn into a wolf whenever, you know. But when I came around, things had to change.”

The new information makes possibilities race through Harry’s mind – is that what Zayn had been doing, when Harry had commandeered his bedroom? Sleeping in the forest?

“It’s not so bad,” Zayn mumbles sleepily the night before Liam’s birthday celebration is to start, all of them planning a nice lunch and a day free of chores for everyone. Harry, particularly, is happy he doesn’t have to wash their clothes with the machine that’s about to take off into space it rattles so much.

“Zayn,” scolds Harry, “You should’ve said something.”

“You needed it more than I did,” Zayn explains, the pad of his thumb rubbing into Harry’s pulse point, the two of them lying side by side in bed.

“You need to take things for yourself, sometimes,” Harry murmurs, thumbing at Zayn’s bottom lip, “Suffering in silence isn’t helping any of us.”

But Zayn’s asleep, lulled into unconsciousness by the soft sounds of the summer insects outside.

The next morning he wakes late, and he wakes alone. He makes it downstairs, new swimming trunks sitting low on his hips, to see Niall shoving some toast in his mouth.

“You’re up,” He announces after a particularly loud swallow, “And dressed. Presume you’re keen for a swim, then? Day’s goin’ to be a scorcher.”

“Why is England like this?” Harry asks, sighing, “The last few days have been awful and now we’ve got a heat wave? It’s not natural.”

Niall opens his mouth, smirk playing around his eyes.

“ _Don’t,_ ” Harry stresses, pointing at Niall with exasperation, “Say it’s supernatural.”

“You ruin all the fun, Haz,” Niall says, but he shrugs like it’s no big deal and the two of them make their way to that creek from eons ago; when Harry had tried to run, and Niall had caught him without any sort of effort at all.

When they reach the break in the trees, Harry sees the others already there, Louis perched on the birthday boy’s shoulders.

“Oi, oi!” Louis calls out, grinning, “Come to challenge the great Tommo for his crown?”

“Hey,” Liam objects, frowning.

“And his noble steed, Payno!”

“What are you, five?” Niall calls out in response, jogging to the water line. Zayn’s standing just behind the two idiots, hair wet and a patient look on his face. “Harry, let’s smash these morons.”

Once Harry’s in the water, unable to say no, Niall hops up onto his shoulders, pulling a little on Harry’s hair in the process until he shifts away, pushing it to the side considerately.

“Thanks.” Harry says, and Niall simply pats him on the head.

It’s a game of strength, but also of cunning. Louis uses his legs to push Harry back, so Harry grabs onto them, pulling until Louis looks like he’s about to slide off.

“Hey–!” But Louis’ protest is drowned out, quite literally, by the face full of water he gets, dropping down into the river with a splash of flailing limbs.

“Think Niall and Harry win,” announces Zayn, unofficial referee, when Louis resurfaces.

“Cheating!” Louis cries, pointing at them. “Bias!” He points to Zayn. “You’re banging one of them!”

“Louis!” Zayn snaps, glaring.

“Why don’t Zayn and Harry verse each other?” Liam says, quite diplomatically if the friendly expression on his face is anything to go by. Harry shrugs, but his gut flutters thinking of the wet slide of skin, the firm grip of Zayn on him.

Though Liam’s thicker than both Niall and Louis, he’s unlikely to be able to take their weights because Harry’s too big, and Zayn’s too strong.

Harry positions his thighs firmly on Niall’s shoulders, and glimpses Louis’ determined face as he hoists Zayn up onto his own.

“You’re going down, Styles,” Louis threatens, but Harry can’t help but stare into Zayn’s eyes, his skin erupting in goosebumps, his breath coming quicker in the excitement.

“Alright,” Liam starts, “On your marks, get set. Go!”

Neither of them darts forward, hands out, to make contact. In fact, both of them remain still, eying up their opponent. Harry grins, feels his dimples flash, at their similar mindsets.

“Gotta start sometime, lads,” Niall urges, and then Harry flings out his hand, nails grazing Zayn’s forearm before Zayn flips it, wrist to Harry’s with a firm grasp of his elbow, thumb digging into the joint and effectively rendering it useless.

Harry jerks his shoulder back, Louis having to follow to keep a hold of Zayn. He and Niall are shouting, yelling, trading jabs at each other as Harry brings his left arm up to rip Zayn’s from his right elbow.

He looks up, hair soaking and dripping into his vision, to see Zayn’s eyes flash with a flicker of orange, his grip tightening painfully as he tries to grab at Harry’s left leg.

Determined, Harry lets him do so as he falls forward into Zayn’s chest. Not expecting the sudden weight, they’re already way too off-balance for Zayn to adjust for it, and the two of them drop into the water on Harry’s left side, Zayn hitting it first.

Harry hears the jeers of Niall before his hearing is compromised, the rush of water muting the cries.

Zayn pushes at him, but it’s playful, fun, and they both come up gasping once they manage to get their feet stable on the spongy river floor, their hips knocking into each other.

“Think you might’ve won that one,” Zayn pants, hair in his face. Harry pushes it away, eyes tracing the clean cut of Zayn’s jaw that the movement reveals.

“Nah,” Harry replies, grinning, “S’yours.”

“What’s my reward?” Zayn mutters, and his eyes drop to Harry’s mouth. Harry licks his lips, ready to reply, when a wave of water crashes into them.

“Bloody hell,” Louis complains, his tone light but carrying a warning, “You two are unstoppable.”

“Just ‘cause you can’t get laid,” Zayn comments blandly, and Harry whips his gaze to him, eyebrows almost off his forehead and a shocked laugh escaping his lips.

Niall guffaws, splashing about as Louis glares.

“Never thought I’d see the day, Zayn,” Niall manages to gasp out, “That your inner monologue might be vocalised.”

“Tommo’s in love,” Liam says, and Louis glares at him, instead, “I think it’s romantic, waiting for her.”

“Oh my God, shut _up,_ Liam.” Somehow, knee-deep in water, Louis manages to stomp off to the shore, lying himself down on a towel and covering his face with his hands in mortification.

He comes around soon after, though, with all of them jostling each other on the walk back to the house, Zayn’s hand resting lightly on Harry’s hip. He runs it over the extra weight there like it’s endearing rather than something Harry tries not to think about when he squeezes into his skinniest jeans before a night out.

Harry’s putting together some sandwiches, Zayn buttering the bread by his side, when Liam says “Oi, turn around!” and then he’s taking a selfie, himself in front, Niall and Louis pulling faces at the table, and Harry and Zayn looking stunned in the background.

“That’ll be good,” Liam says, looking down at his phone with a smile; he’s the only one who can handle them gently enough, maybe besides Zayn. “I’ve got one of those instant printers now. I’ll put it through later.”

Lunch is simple, just the sandwiches and some fruit and then the ice cream for dessert, a lonely candle stuck into Liam’s. Nevertheless, it seems to be enough, Liam grinning at them all, his eyes glistening.

“Thanks, lads,” He chokes out, and Louis grabs him into a headlock before he can say anything else, teasing him about being a sap.

They trickle out of the kitchen slowly after the meal, and Liam makes noise about having to get back on the road before Harry shoots him down, tells him it’s his birthday and he should relax.

“Not my birthday for over a week, Haz,” Liam says, but he smiles broadly nonetheless.

“I’m gonna shower, Liam,” Zayn tells the two of them, standing from the table with a squeeze to Harry’s knee, “If I don’t see you, have an awesome birthday.”

“Thanks, mate,” Liam says, smiling again, before Zayn leaves the room. Niall and Louis are outside, still making use of the sun, kicking about the new football that Liam picked up.

“You don’t want a kickabout?” Harry asks, picking up the remaining plates on the table and dumping them in the sink. Louis can do them, probably. He always manages to evade the dishes.

“No,” Liam answers, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes, a look of complete contentment on his face, “Bit tired, me. Can’t keep up with you lot these days.”

Harry feels the power in his limbs, the pure energy in his veins; he’s not tired at all, not after the river or lunch or the thought of going out and joining the others in a game. Harry could probably run five miles right now, if he so wanted.

“I think they forget,” Harry explains, sitting back down, but closer to Liam this time, “Too far from human.”

Liam huffs out a laugh, eyes still closed. “Maybe.”

They sit in comfortable silence for a good ten minutes, Liam still resting as Harry catalogues everything about him; from his strong brows to his round face, to his designer stubble, to his muscled arms, to his skinny legs. Harry can see why Sophia – successful, cutthroat Sophia – would fall in love with him. Liam is simple, easy, not at all difficult. He’s sensitive, but he’s not needy, and he doesn’t let other people tell him how to be. Louis can be a bulldozer, Harry knows. Yet Liam handles him with a grace Harry nor Zayn have mastered, even if Louis groans and snaps at him.

“I wanted to thank you,” Harry interrupts the silence, his tone gentle enough that it’s not a shock to the room, “For everything you do, Liam.”

The broader man opens his eyes, tilts his head with a confused smile. “Harry, what–”

“This place would fall apart without you, you know?” Harry tells him, smiling. “Zayn would’ve been completely lost those first years.”

“He’s my friend,” Liam says, like that’s all that anyone needs to receive the kind of loyalty Liam’s shown over the years, “Of course I was going to help.”

“It’s more than help, though,” Harry says, and suddenly the need for Liam to realise this takes over him, like a rush of adrenaline, “You kept Zayn going, and then you saved Niall’s life–”

“That was Zayn–”

“ _You saved Niall's life,_ ” Harry reiterates firmly, smile turning serious, “And you take time out of your weeks to buy us our food, repair this old as shit house.”

Liam chuckles, rubbing a hand over his face.

“Thank you, Liam.” Harry finishes, smiling. He reaches forward, places his hand on top of Liam’s on the table.

There’s a moment – Harry likes to think these kinds of moments define people, really. The moments where time stands still, where thoughts flicker across a face faster than one can blink. The moments where you can accept or deny, agree or disagree, let go or cling harder. Harry both loves and hates these moments, because they can change everything, but not always in the ways you expect.

“It’s alright,” Liam murmurs, looking a little small. He pulls his hand away, but the shy smile that graces his handsome features makes Harry grin wide.

“Are you and Sophia doing anything special, then?” He asks, and the look of delight that takes over Liam’s expression is thanks in and of itself.

Liam leaves soon after, still begging off when Harry tells him he can stay for dinner. He does look tired, though, and there’s an hour drive to take him back to Manchester. So he goes, and Harry leaves Niall and Louis to clean up the mess in the kitchen.

“We didn’t get Liam a present,” Harry says through the bathroom door when he reaches their room, Zayn finishing up in the shower. He’s puttering about, waiting for Zayn to be done so he can wash the river’s grit from his sensitive skin.

Zayn emerges barely a second later, steam following. “I got him something,” Zayn answers, like Harry was asking him. “Sophia’s goin’ to give it to him on the day.”

“What is it?”

Zayn chuckles. “I bought him a trip to _Harry Potter_ world. That kid is obsessed.”

“What?” Harry squawks, “That’s _a lot_ of money, Zayn.”

“Yeah,” Zayn shrugs, and Harry’s throat clogs, “But it’s Liam.”

It’s so easy to visualise. Liam coming back from holiday in autumn, ranting and raving about how wonderful it was. _“You should’ve been there, Zayn,”_ Harry can imagine Liam gushing, _“We got to see Diagon Alley.”_

It’s even easier to feel the way Zayn’s laugh would go through Harry, rattle his bones and his very sense of self. It’s so easy to feel what would be the presence of Niall and Louis in his thoughts, a little jealous but mostly happy. It’s easy, then, to see some months from now, around Christmas. Taking Niall to see his nephew, Louis to reunite with his family. It’s easy to imagine Zayn meeting Gemma, his sister critical but also smirking at Harry, like Zayn’s good looks were something he never would’ve been able to resist.

 _“You’re a sucker,”_ Harry knows she’d say, _“How long did it take you to sleep with him?”_

And she’d know, wouldn’t she – that Zayn was going to be around a while – when Harry told her they’d fought, at first. That Harry had hated him.

 _“Fine line between love and hate, little brother.”_ Gemma would say, and Harry would look at Zayn, nodding along respectfully to his mother, and he’d realise exactly what that meant.

“ _Harry,_ ” Zayn stresses like it’s not the first time he’s said it, and Harry snaps back into the present like a rubber band, inhaling sharply, “Are you alrigh’?”

“I’m fine,” Harry assures him, smiling a little weakly. He grabs his pyjamas from the foot of the bed and heads to the bathroom, locking himself away with his panicked thoughts.

It’s too soon. Way too soon. But the images come to his mind anyway – the four of them growing older; nothing drastic, just a few years. Harry writing about art history from the house, Zayn selling his paintings from the greenhouse. Maybe Niall could get a job in town – he seems alright enough – something to do with people, Harry thinks. He’d be good at that. Louis could teach, maybe. Distance learning, if he had to. See his little sisters in the eyes of his pupils. It’s a family that forms without consequence in his mind. Then later, much older, little feet pattering on the wooden floors of a renovated home–

Harry’s right hand flies to his stomach, his left to the wall. He hunches over, squeezing his eyes shut tightly as his hair plasters itself to his forehead.

A yearning tugs at his gut, something he hasn’t let himself think about, not since he and Zayn first kissed. His chest feels tight, his legs a little tingly; he’s blinking away the spots in his vision, wondering whether any of this is _normal,_ or just a symptom of his lycanthropy: of not being human.

He takes some deep breaths, stands straight.

This _is_ normal. It’s normal for Harry now, to want kids so badly his stomach aches. It’s normal for Harry to imagine a future of stability, his packmates happy and focused. This is the new normal, and Harry can either panic about it in the shower like a teenager, or he can take a deep breath and accept his circumstances.

“Hey,” Zayn greets him when Harry exits the bathroom, hair towel-dried and pyjamas in place; just a loose t-shirt and some old boxers of Liam’s, funnily enough. It’s too hot for joggers, and Harry thinks walking out naked might be too much of an assumption given the concerned edge to Zayn’s gorgeous features.

Zayn’s legs are crossed at the ankles, and he puts down the book he was reading on his bedside when Harry simply crawls over him, kissing him soundly.

“Alrigh’?” he murmurs against Harry’s lips. Harry nods, not trusting himself to speak, and leans in. Their mouths connect, closed but yielding. Zayn’s hand cradles the hinge of Harry’s jaw, and everything feels like it’s been turned to a hundred; Harry’s hands fumble with Zayn’s ‘so faded it’s grey and not black’ t-shirt, his skin tingling when his palms glide over the hair just under Zayn’s bellybutton. The hand that slides from jaw to hair, pulling, makes Harry gasp against Zayn’s cheek.

He pulls back only to fling Zayn’s shirt off and away, followed quickly by his own. Zayn snaps the elastic of Harry’s boxers, chuckling when Harry’s breath hitches, and drags them down his thighs with purpose. Zayn lifts up, and then Harry’s falling back, head at the foot of the bed. Zayn’s hands circle his wrists, pinning them down beside his head. Harry’s fingers brush against his own curls, splayed as they are, and Zayn leans down not to kiss, but to nudge against Harry’s jaw, then his nose. The incredulous thought comes to Harry then that it’s like wolves greeting each other, scenting one another.

Maybe it is – it doesn’t matter, really – because Zayn inhales deeply, and there’s the lightest brush of their noses before they’re kissing once more, mouths sliding against each other over and over and over again until Harry’s lips feel numb and overused. He doesn’t even register, at first, the removal of Zayn’s briefs; so drunk he is on Zayn’s attentions. He doesn’t notice it, not until Zayn’s cock brushes against his and then Harry can’t stop the gasp from escaping, hips thrusting up on instinct.

In a flash, Zayn’s flipped him over, his cock sliding between Harry’s cheeks and spreading his wetness, making Harry moan and buck his hips up into Zayn. His wrists are free from pressure, but they remain by his head, his hands white-knuckling the covers as Zayn leans over him, licking and biting at the nape of Harry’s neck, right over his bite.

Harry cries out, wriggling under Zayn’s weight, feeling everything in him get hotter, more turned on. He’s almost dripping, which is the most unusual and erotic sensation he’s ever experienced, Zayn moving down his spine, biting and licking along the way until he gets to Harry’s entrance. He gives his right cheek a sharp nip, and then he’s licking into Harry, ignoring his bitten-off cries when Harry remembers they’re not exactly alone in the house.

“Zayn,” Harry pants, dropping his forehead to the bed and arching his back, cock straining against the mattress like any amount of friction will undo him in a heartbeat, “ _Fuck,_ please.”

There’s an echo of laughter in his head, and then Harry realises what he’s said, what Zayn is amused by.

“Shut up,” Harry mutters, kicking out at Zayn, “You’re the worst.”

Zayn doesn’t say anything, simply lines up and sinks in like Harry needed no warning at all.

Harry’s brain whites out for a split second, and then he’s pushing back into it, in awe that nothing hurts; there’s just the stretch, something that he welcomes, that feels good. It’s not the stretch that means he’s got to bear down, deal with it. It’s the stretch of muscle that means he’s worked himself sore, that means his body is relaxing into the strain, feeling good and getting better.

His chin’s over the edge of the bed now, and Harry closes his eyes, gripping the covers and trying not to moan on every thrust. He manages to push himself up onto his elbows, but then Zayn snaps his hips hard and fast and Harry has to collapse, limbs too much like jelly and Zayn’s cock catching on his prostate too regularly for Harry to be able to hold himself up.

They slow, though; so gradually that the slide of Zayn inside him makes his thighs twitch, every ridge of Zayn felt. Harry clenches down, relishes in the breath that sounds like it’s been punched out of Zayn at the action.

“Babe,” Zayn exhales, “Can you turn around?”

Harry can barely lift his head to shake it, biting his lip so hard not to come that there must be blood. Zayn’s firm hands grip his hips, and they separate for only a short moment, Harry making an indignant sound of protest, before Zayn pushes back in, Harry now on his back and his arse resting on top of Zayn’s spread thighs.

The position puts pressure on Harry’s back, but those years-old issues are long gone with the introduction of his lycanthropy. Then there’s Zayn’s strength, which means he can hold onto Harry’s soft hips and thrust into him for as long as they’d like, the only evidence of their stamina Zayn’s heaving chest and Harry’s lax sprawl across his thighs.

This time, Harry finds the air stolen from him not because of the roughness of the thrusts, or the drags across his prostate; this time Zayn grinds into Harry, shallow but visceral, and he can’t catch his breath.

Harry’s not sure how long they rock into each other for; there’s a hot, burning feeling in his abdomen, travelling slowly down his thighs. Zayn’s eyes are roving over Harry, whose heavy, half-lidded stare doesn’t seem to bother the alpha.

Then Zayn’s pulling on Harry’s hips, forcing him up until he’s seated in Zayn’s lap, elbows on Zayn’s shoulders and eyes fluttering at the first thrust up into him.

“Look at me,” Zayn mumbles, and Harry opens his eyes slowly, hair tickling his cheeks until Zayn brushes it away. Zayn’s cheeks are a little pink with exertion – though likely nowhere near Harry’s own – and his eyes bore into Harry’s like he’s trying to tell him something. Their chests rub together, Harry’s nipples hard and sensitive, and he’s about to duck down, take one of Zayn’s into his mouth, when Zayn continues. “Listen, babe. _Listen._ ”

Harry’s mind flashes back to the first time they did this, when Zayn told him to let go.

His gazes snaps back to Zayn’s at the memory, and he doesn’t know how it happens or what he does, but suddenly he can feel Zayn in his head; like he’s always been there, like he never left.

 _So beautiful fuck Haz you’re everything so good so good to me I love you please I love you_ so tight _holy shit Haz I’m so fuck gorgeous made for me love you–_

Harry knows his thoughts are running into each other similarly, a litany of praise and love and everything he’s feeling. Harry knows this because he can feel Zayn like Zayn can feel him; he can feel his cock inside something, hot and warm and wet, and he can feel Zayn in him, stretched and full. He can feel Zayn’s hard hands on his hips, but he can also feel his own soft skin beneath his fingers. He feels and can feel, he gives and he receives; and then the both of them cry out, because Zayn shifts the angle, their chins bumping into each other, and every thrust sends waves of pleasure through Harry.

Harry squeezes his eyes shut, and he knows Zayn does too, and then the both of them make noise again – Harry more of a whine – their hips jerking as they come in unison, breathing heavily against each other once it’s done. Harry thinks it might’ve been his longest orgasm ever, because every time he thought it was ending, he felt Zayn, and his orgasm, and everything became one big feedback loop.

He falls back onto the mattress, panting, legs strewn across the bed as Zayn slips out, slumping until his head rests on Harry’s stomach, and his own abdomen lies against the covers.

 _Wet spot,_ Harry thinks absently, brain flying.

His hands end up in Zayn’s spiky hair, though, carding their way through it absentmindedly. Harry’s mind is quiet, as is Zayn’s, and the serenity of the moment drags on until his eyes are struggling to stay open, and Zayn’s breaths are a comforting rhythm against his left laurel.

Zayn’s island isn’t an island anymore. They crashed together, tectonic and deafening. Oceans moved, and land shifted to accommodate. Harry feels his very core has changed, his thoughts ricocheting off of the murky dreams of his Alpha; he plays around with it, a smile on his face. Zayn’s seeing his family again, and Harry’s right there beside him, smiling, picking up Safaa – she’d be too big now, but Zayn’s mind can’t fathom it – and tickling her until she’s laughing, squirming away. Zayn looks at Harry and Harry looks at Zayn; and whilst they see each other, they also see themselves.

Harry stumbles into sleep, his heart not his own and his thoughts someone else’s. Tangled together, entwined, their very DNA altered.

It’s not strange nor does it hurt; and Harry knows, before his thoughts taper off into dreams, that it’s the most natural thing in the world to love Zayn.

 

***

 

The world is vast and varied. No two people are the same, just like no two blades of grass, no two snowflakes. Even words that share a definition are different, slightly disparate in their meaning. One might shake, but they won’t tremble. One might smile, but they won’t grin. One might make, but they won’t create.

The world is enormous; language is infinite, people are everywhere, and yet Harry hadn’t ever considered that his life, small and insignificant as it is, could tilt so wildly off-balance not just once, but twice.

The knife’s edge that Harry has been treading sharpens, and waking up two days after the full moon – a full moon he’d managed to piece together from jagged memories, a full moon that Louis had transformed seamlessly through – leaves him feeling alive in a way he’d forgotten to feel in months. Longer even than he had been a werewolf.

Zayn sleeps on, curled toward Harry who lets his heart slow, match Zayn’s. If he wanted to, he could prod at Zayn’s dreams, interrupt the meal he’s having with his father; but it’s not urgent, Harry’s desire to kiss him. So he leaves him with a lingering press to a cheek, gathering a t-shirt and some loose jeans for the day before starting up his shower, door wide open in case Zayn wakes from his deep sleep and decides to join him.

He’s rinsing the last of the conditioner from his hair when he feels the prickles of unease at the back of his head. Louis.

Harry doesn’t like to pry too much; Zayn and he are different, but with the others he prefers to speak to them in person instead of eavesdropping. So, when he’s pulled on his clothes, given his hair a quick towel dry, and he’s making his way downstairs, he doesn’t think to take a peek. Instead, he’s frowning at the growing anxiety, curious as to its cause.

“Louis, who...” Harry trails off, stopping short at the bottom of the stairs. It’s obvious now, why Harry had felt his discomfort, his unease – Louis knows, from the picture in Harry’s old wallet, who this is. The way he’s standing at the door defensively makes sense, and Harry feels a crashing wave of relief come over him.

“Harry?” Gemma asks, and she pushes Louis away roughly, causing him to stumble back into the side table with a grumble. There are bags under her eyes, and her purple dye’s long faded out, leaving her with the most awful regrowth and tangled, bleached hair. “ _Harry!_ ”

She rushes him, backpack swinging. Harry accepts her hug with ease, folding himself over and letting her head bury itself into his neck. She’s shaking, and Harry can’t seem to feel anything but shock.

Gemma’s barely there half a minute before she pushes back, eyes roving over him. “Harry, are you alright?” She exhales shakily, laughing. “What the fuck? Oh God, Mum’s going to–” She crashes into him again, and Harry lets out an ‘oof’, surprised.

Harry’s eyes find Louis, and the panic at the back of his head doubles. Louis’ face is wrought with stress, his eyes wide with helplessness. Harry swallows, squeezing Gemma tighter than he probably should.

“Can’t breathe,” Gemma gasps, and Harry lets go of her abruptly, causing her to stumble.

“Sorry,” He apologises quietly, “Don’t know my own strength sometimes.”

Louis would snort under normal circumstances, but instead he looks off to the side, unable to meet Harry’s eyes. Harry looks back to his sister – his wonderful, beautiful, courageous sister – to see her blinking back tears, wiping at her eyes with a wet laugh.

“Don’t cry,” Harry croaks out, helping her rub away the salt, “I’m alright, Gem. Promise.”

Gemma’s face scrunches up, and she lets her head fall into Harry’s chest in the next moment, wetting his threadbare t-shirt with her silent tears. Harry holds her close, a palm at the back of her head and his other arm wrapped around her shoulders, just above her backpack, fusing her to him like that’ll stop her from leaving, from Harry disappearing. He’s not sure if it’s more for her benefit, or for his.

“I think I’m dreaming,” She mutters into Harry’s sternum, and Harry can’t help the laugh that comes out of him then, a little thick with his own unshed tears.

“You know what they say,” He starts, and she leans back to look up at him, her eyes big and round and hopeful, “Even in the Wizarding World, hearing voices isn’t a good sign.”

Gemma chokes out a laugh. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“No,” Harry agrees, brushing her hair away from her face. He pauses, inhales sharply. “It’s good to see you.”

“Harry.”

He twists, looking up to see Zayn half-way down the steps, looking between he and Gemma. Zayn has to know – Harry’s thoughts, Louis’ thoughts – who this is. Harry turns back to Gemma, ignoring the dent in her brow.

“Let’s sit down. I’ll explain.” Harry murmurs, dropping a hand to grab one of hers, tugging her behind him into the lounge area.

Niall meets them there. Gemma jumps when he appears, even as he smiles gently.

“Sorry,” Niall apologises, and Harry’s sister shifts closer to him, gripping his hand more tightly.

Louis has managed to clear his face of worry in the time it takes for him to sit down on the old, terrible sofa. The house suddenly seems a lot more downtrodden than Harry has thought it to be; the old electronics, the ratty sofa, the chipping paint. Harry’s seeing it through new eyes – Gemma’s eyes – again, and he understands the way Gemma refuses to let go of him. He can hear her heart like a battering ram, the beats toppling over one another in their haste.

There’s a soft touch at his elbow, and Harry turns back. Zayn stares at him, gaze flitting between Harry’s eyes, as frantic as Harry’s ever seen him.

_Harry?_

“It’s alright,” Harry mumbles back, speaking for the sake of his sister, “It’ll be okay, I promise.”

Zayn’s touch leaves him. Harry makes Gemma sit down on the frumpy armchair, seating himself on its arm as the others settle around the room. Niall lands heavily next to Louis on the couch, but Zayn remains standing behind it, hands coming up to rest on its back.

“These are my friends,” Harry explains, turning his head to meet Gemma’s gaze, “I’m living here for a bit.”

“Friends?” Gemma echoes, her sharp eyes now assessing the other men in the room. “Harry,” Gemma begins quietly, and the others wouldn’t be able to hear her if they were human, “You’ve never talked about friends out this way before. You would’ve said, wouldn’t you, if you were holidaying with them?”

Harry licks his lips, squeezing her hand, “It’s complicated.”

Gemma trusts him. It’s the only reason she doesn’t demand he explain himself right away, doesn’t drag him from the house without looking back. She trusts him not to be stupid, and it crushes Harry’s spirit a bit that he has to lie to her.

“This is Zayn,” He nods over at him, wishing he could hold his hand, too. Anchor the growing storm in his eyes, “Niall,” he gestures at the beta, who gives a salute in return, “And you’ve already met Louis. They’re…” He looks to Zayn, a question in his eyes. _What do I call you?_

“Very pleased to meet you.” Louis finishes for him after a beat, perking up in the absence of everyone else, “Sorry about before, that picture’s mighty different.” He chuckles, but Harry can feel Louis’ hesitance worrying at his own temples. “Haz, you look twelve in that photo.”

“Shove it, Lou.” Harry grumbles good-naturedly, rolling his eyes. Gemma looks between them, a slightly bewildered look on her face. Harry knows the photo Gemma probably used was the one from Christmas, where Harry was wearing a Santa hat, his arms around his family and dimples on full display.

He doesn’t look at all different, save the hair. But the hat would’ve taken care of that discrepancy.

“They’ve been helping me,” Harry tries to say, something lodged in his throat making it hard for the half-arsed lie to get out. None of them had allowed for this eventuality. Harry never would’ve thought his family would find him, not out in the woods like this. “Uni was really stressful. I…” Harry looks at Zayn, sees the smallest of nods, and continues, “Had sort of a breakdown.”

“What is this, then?” She asks, frowning. “A wellness retreat?”

Louis snorts, and Niall steps on his foot obviously enough that an awkward silence follows.

“If you like,” Harry tries, and Gemma’s eyes narrow at him. Harry’s never been able to lie to her, not when it matters. She’s his big sister. She saw through his tale of getting mugged once after school in a minute, when really, he’d been too embarrassed about the bullies roughing him up on the walk home.

Gemma was the first person he admitted he was bisexual to, the first person he called crying when he had no friends first semester of uni. Harry can’t lie to Gemma, because she knows him too well, for too long.

“Can I speak with you?” Gemma asks, pausing before she adds, “Alone.”

 _It’s fine,_ Harry projects, seeing the way Zayn’s mouth parts as if to speak, _She needs this._

 _I need this,_ he keeps to himself.

“We’ll give you a moment,” Zayn acquiesces softly, and the three of them make their way to the kitchen. Harry’s not an idiot – he knows they’ll be listening.

“Harry,” She doesn’t beat around the bush, pulling her hand from him and standing, pacing back and forth in front of the coffee table, “What is going on?”

“I told you.” Harry says, but shuts his mouth quickly at the disdainful look his sister sends his way.

“It’s been months, Harry.” She stops moving, whirling on him instead with her fists clenched. “Mum’s been crying every day. I went back home, helped her out. Robin’s really quiet, Harry. I’ve never seen him so quiet.”

Harry swallows thickly, the guilt he’s been keeping at bay barrelling into his poorly constructed walls once more.

Gemma’s eyes drift past him to the hallway, where the kitchen lies just beyond. Harry can’t hear them speaking, only the clink of mugs, like they’d made themselves tea. He hadn’t heard the kettle boil, too caught up in his sister.

“We all thought you were–” Gemma inhales sharply, blinking away tears and looking back at him before a fierce expression makes a home on her face, “We thought you were _dead,_ and all this time you’ve just been in the forest, joined some sort of– of– of cult!” She hisses the last word as quietly as she can, eyes flicking to the kitchen again.

“Gems,” Harry pleads gently, voice breaking as he stands, “It’s not like that, I swear.”

“Come _home,_ Harry.” Gemma begs him, though it sounds more like a demand.

“I just need some time,” Harry admits, “Another month. I can come home then.” He feels the resistance of the pack at that but pushes them away stubbornly. Surely there must be some sort of compromise now that their circumstances have changed.

“I only came around this area because I got a call,” Gemma says, still stricken, “Some woman from over in Chesterfield,” Louis curses in the other room, a muted _Shit,_ “said she recognised you from the posters I’d put up in Manchester. She’d been up that way for a fucking _visit_ to her daughter at uni, called her up to get my details after she’d seen you in town. _Harry,_ ” Gemma stresses, eyes wide and desperate, “I only found you because of some _fluke._ I can’t just leave you here.”

“You might have to.” Harry says quietly, rubbing a hand over his tired face.

She stares at him. Her limp hair, haggard eyes, chapped lips, chipped nail polish; Harry sees it all, and his heart shrivels up pathetically, sorrow piercing the muscle like an arrow.

“I’m sorry,” he says, because there’s nothing more to say.

“No, Haz,” Gemma whispers, “ _I’m_ sorry. I’m sorry I let this happen. I’m sorry it took me so long to find you.”

“Don’t,” Harry swallows back the tears once more, sighing, “Gemma, I’m fine.”

“Was this your choice?” Gemma asks, and she’s right in front of him now, both of his hands in hers. The others might strain to hear her, at this distance and volume. “Did they force you?”

Harry doesn’t know what she’s asking, exactly, but he can’t lie to her – not when the question hits so close to home about parts of this experience that haven’t been as easy as the last six or so weeks.

“That’s not freedom, Harry,” Gemma whispers at his silence, and the tears run down her cheeks once more, “You’re not free.”

“I’m fine,” Harry chokes out, but the pitying look Gemma gives him lets him know she doesn’t believe him, not one bit.

“I won’t leave here without you,” she declares, pushing his hair away from his face. Harry lets his eyes close, his breath escaping him in a relieved whoosh. He tries not to think about why. “It’s both of us or nothing.”

She gives him a weak quirk of her pale lips. Harry drops his head to her shoulder in an echo of their earlier embrace, the roles now reversed as her hands run through his hair in consolation.

“Don’t leave, yeah?” Harry murmurs, extracting himself from his sister’s arms to stand, turning back only once in his departure to shoot her a comforting smile.

“She’s… she’s worried.” Harry concludes once he reaches the kitchen, Zayn leaning against the counter by the kettle and the other two sitting at the table, playing with their fingers. “I can’t convince her to go right now. It’ll take at least the day.”

Zayn look is piercing but Harry focuses on Niall, who nods like that’s exactly what he expected.

“We should go,” Louis speaks up, and Harry turns to him, attentive. He’s looking between all of them, expression neutral. “She doesn’t trust us, and she doesn’t trust what you have to say around us. Liam’ll take us in for the night, he’s not too far from here these days.”

So they heard her, then. Harry wants to cringe, the embarrassment trickling in. Gemma had a right to say the things she said, but she doesn’t know the finer details – and it’s those finer details that matter the most, Harry knows, because they’re what have made him think twice, settle in.

Zayn stays silent, but there’s no disagreement to be had so the betas stand, gathering their mugs to plonk in the sink, then move past Harry at the jamb with a few understanding pats on the back.

Harry pads further into the kitchen, stopping only once he’s barely a foot away from Zayn.

“Say something?” Harry ignores the crack in his quiet voice, eyes imploring Zayn to give him this.

“You already know what I think,” Zayn replies, but he widens his legs in invitation. Harry steps into them, and Zayn lifts a hand to push an errant lock of hair behind Harry’s ear, thumb caressing its shell gently.

“She’s my _sister._ ” Harry tries to explain. Zayn licks his lips and gives a slight nod.

“I know,” acknowledges Zayn, “And you know that it’s dangerous, her being here. Imagine if she’d found us two days ago?”

They’re soft, Zayn’s implications; like he trusts Harry to reach the correct conclusions and make the choice that’s best. Harry wants to – _God,_ does he want to, Zayn’s gentle reasoning considerate and thoughtful and not at all an _order_ – but this is Gemma. It’s Gemma.

Zayn’s hand drops to Harry’s shoulder, his fingers brushing over the bite that sits inconspicuously underneath his dark hair. Harry shivers, biting his bottom lip to get a hold of himself.

The alpha’s eyes bore into Harry, but then they slide slightly to Harry’s right. Harry tenses, suddenly sensing his sister at the doorway. He has to turn, Zayn’s hand dragging down and away from Harry with the movement.

“Gem,” Harry croaks, clearing his throat at the jagged edges to his tone, “The others are going to give us a day, you and me.”

Gemma’s eyes search Harry’s, then she critiques Zayn. Finally, though, she nods, jaw clenched.

Zayn shifts, his right hand landing on Harry’s generous hip to give it a slight squeeze before they lose contact altogether. Zayn gives Gemma a nod as he leaves the room, turning to head up the stairs and no doubt pack enough for a night at Liam’s small flat in Manchester.

“They shouldn’t be ‘giving’ you anything, Haz,” Gemma comments, and Harry brings a hand up to worry at his bottom lip, unsure what he can say to keep Gemma’s ire at bay.

Liam comes by in just over an hour. Harry’d thought– well, that they’d needed a car to leave. But seeing it now, it’s too small to carry all of them.

Niall appears once Liam arrives, however, with a newer looking truck, large enough for three of them in the front, and someone to take a seat in the tray. Harry would worry about safety, but with Liam driving, the rest of them are fine without seatbelts – both because of Liam’s stringent safety rules, and their ability to withstand injuries that would be fatal to anyone else.

Harry’s eyes follow Zayn as he throws his backpack in the tray. His thoughts broadcast for everyone to hear.

_When were you going to tell me about the truck?_

He doesn’t get a direct reply, and Niall’s eyes scoot away when Harry tries to catch them.

 _Liam’s keys are on the side table if you need anything,_ Louis projects from the front seat without looking at him. _See you tomorrow._

Swallowing back his growing frustration, Harry turns toward the house, not bothering to wave goodbye as the four of them drive off together. The place seems too still, too muted with only Harry and Gemma there to occupy it. Not when Harry’s been used to at least three other bodies milling around.

He’s on edge almost immediately, the cocoon of the pack fading away with each mile they drive toward Manchester. Liam hadn’t said much, just smiled at him and Gemma before gathering everything up. Harry’s not even sure how they contacted him.

Without the others there to distract him with a game, or a chat, or some sort of activity, he’s finding it hard to rectify what he knows with the questions that are rushing into his head.

“Harry,” begins his sister a fair bit later, sitting at the kitchen table with the remnants of their late lunch strewn around her. She looks up at him, her hands cradling the glass of water she’s been sipping at delicately for the past four minutes, “What are you doing here, really?”

“It’s complicated,” repeats Harry after a moment, stuck on how to explain this in any way that won’t have Gemma trying to get him to a hospital, or a therapist.

“Then uncomplicate it!” Gemma exclaims, slapping her hand against the table top. “What am I supposed to think, Haz? Three strangers are hanging around you, one of them–!” She cuts herself off, takes a massive breath that leaves even Harry feeling strung out. “I just want you to be safe.”

“I’m safe,” Harry consoles her, thinking about how nothing but another werewolf could really harm him now. But Gemma doesn’t know that – won’t know that, at least for a long while, if Harry has anything to do with it. He misses home, suddenly and ardently, his chest aching with its memory. “I _am_ safe. That’s not the issue.”

It’s not until Harry registers Gemma’s quick turn of her head that he realises what he’s said.

“Then what is?” Gemma prods.

“It’s nothing.” Harry shakes his head, frowning down at the wood’s grain, tracing it with a finger, “Don’t worry about me, alright? I’m safe.”

“But are you happy?”

Harry lifts his head, lips twisting in thought. Gemma’s hazel eyes are wide, her lips pursed like she’s trying to hold something back.

He stands, picking up their plates and clearing everything away. “Let me show you around,” Harry suggests, back to his sister. Her heart beats steady and strong, and he imagines the small victory that’s pounding through her veins is giving her confidence, hope. “The area’s nice, Gem.”

They tour the house first, Harry gesturing quickly at his bedroom and hoping Gemma doesn’t glimpse the two sides of the bed, both unmade.

Then he takes her outside, shows her the creek and the patrol route. By the time they make it back to the house, it’s nearing five o’clock. Dusk won’t be for a few hours, but the strained silence between them is foreign to Harry, so he busies himself with cleaning up each room, finding new places for the odd bits and pieces that lay about.

They have dinner around seven, and Gemma watches him closely, like she’s waiting for him to snap. Her words bounce around his head, and he’s trying to ignore the discomfort he feels at being separated from the others. He feels Zayn’s physical absence most keenly of all, even if the steady presence of him in Harry’s mind remains.

They don’t talk at dinner, and Harry fidgets until he can excuse himself, almost running to upstairs to the bedroom, changing out of the day’s clothes for something to do, replacing his jeans with joggers and shoving on the softest socks he can find.

He’s not left alone, however; the jitters of his bone marrow remain, and he ends up in the en suite bathroom, locking the door with a snap.

He sinks to the floor, back to wood, and buries his face in his palms, digs the meat of them into his eyes until he’s seeing colours he can’t name.

His sister intruding on this space – the newly calm, lycanthropic space – has his hands trembling. He clenches his fists, shakes out the tremors, resting his elbows on his knees. Staring at the glass wall of the shower, he can see his reflection; the slight gleam to his tangled hair, grease making an appearance despite the shower that morning – and doesn’t that feel like millennia ago, this morning. Last night, even, Zayn falling asleep between one breath and the next, his cheek against Harry’s abdomen like he was trying to hear–

The glass doesn’t reflect his pallor, but Harry feels cold and pale anyway, his eyes wide, his socked feet lending the image a pathetic sort of air.

 _You’re not free,_ Gemma whispers in his head, and Harry shuts his eyes so tight he can’t feel his face, trying not to let the sting of his nose progress into something else.

The car, hidden in the woods without a thought. A phone, somewhere, used to call Liam during emergencies. Zayn telling him not to question things, to just accept them. Hanging about the property like Harry doesn’t have a life outside of it, a family waiting for him an hour and a half away.

The assumption that Harry would turn Gemma away; an assumption Harry had even made.

His stomach roils, and Harry’s retching before he can think, scrambling forward to lean over the toilet.

Nothing leaves him, just an inelegant glob of saliva he has to spit into the bowl.

Breathing heavily, Harry rests his forehead on the cool toilet seat, uncaring about anything but how he’s managed to get himself here, to a life where his family isn’t the most important thing, and he’s wasting away in a cabin in the woods with nothing to do and nowhere to go. There’s no future here, like Harry might’ve thought twenty-four hours ago.

He’s been a victim of his biology – the realisation makes him retch again, hand over stomach, until he’s gasping for air. He snatches his hand away, the betrayal burning across his skin.

This isn’t the new normal. He got himself into this mess, and he’s got to get himself out.

Gemma’s words filter through to the front of his mind once more, a mantra Harry finds himself listening to as he numbly makes his way down the stairs. His body rebels against it, cringes away from such thoughts – but Harry pushes on and lets himself have this. The hidden truth.

 _I’m not free,_ he realises, hands shaking as he turns the key in the lock and enters the reimagined greenhouse. _I’ve been a prisoner this whole time._

The words of Miguel de Cervantes spring to mind, a lesson laced in fiction that Harry naively ignored.

_And even though the main point of such books is to amuse, I don’t know how they can succeed when they’re full of so many monstrous absurdities._

“The soul can only take delight in the beauty and harmony that it sees or contemplates,” Harry recites from memory in a whisper; because he’d read the lines over and over, thinking of the warmth lying next to him, the beauty in all this madness, “In what the eyes or the imagination places before it, and nothing that contains ugliness or disorder can give any pleasure.”

Harry saw only what he wanted to see – what the months convinced him of. He saw family in these people; he saw friends, and a lover. But they’re all strangers, still. Harry doesn’t know their favourite colours, what they did before they all became full-time werewolves.

The ugliness got swept under the rug, because seeing that and staying in it would’ve been harder than acknowledging the truth.

Gemma walked in and saw it that first minute. She saw the way Louis paled around her, how Niall couldn’t look her in the eyes. She saw Zayn’s hand resting in the junction between Harry’s neck and shoulder, the way Harry looked to him before every sentence that came out of his mouth.

Harry’s grown used to his prison, but that doesn’t mean the bars ever left.

All he’s done is cry and cry and cry; yet the tears fall again, his heart twisting inside his ribcage like it’s trying to escape. And maybe it is; ready to leave its own confines and find its freedom.

The waxing gibbous moon makes the greenhouse glow, the glass glinting with the luminescent light. There’s a constellation in here, sparkling as Harry slowly paces across the tiles, the socks on his feet keeping his movement quiet. His glassy eyes rove over the covered paintings and easels – and it’s only once he reaches the latest and uncovered work in progress that he comes to a stop, breathing heavily.

His tattoos are sketched in, but the rest of his skin is tanned and smooth, splayed out on the sheets like Zayn took a photo instead of putting charcoal to canvas. It’s art, and it’s Harry, and it’s a _lie._

“I hate you,” Harry whispers thickly, trembling hands gripping the wood of the canvas frame. The ever-present calm of the greenhouse breaks when the wood snaps under Harry’s knee, the canvas ripping. “ _I hate you!_ ”

He tears it all up, panting heavily as it flops down onto his feet. It clings to bits of the broken wood, and Harry kicks them away angrily, wiping at his damp face.

His hair’s longer now, tickling his jaw when he grabs for the nearest easel, flinging it and the cloth-covered canvas away from him with a cry, knocking down another. He rips off one more piece from its place, ignoring the sharp pains in his right foot when he slams it down onto the frame, hearing the cracks and relishing in its destruction.

 _How does it feel?_ He wants to scream, but simply grunts wordlessly instead – he knows enough now to realise Zayn probably feels his anguish, feels the phantom sting of Harry’s bite.

With that thought he flees from the room, leaving the door wide open with the key still jammed in.

“We’re going,” He tells Gemma, who he nearly runs into. She must’ve seen the whole mess, just outside the door in her makeshift pyjamas as she is. “Get your stuff.”

She doesn’t say anything, simply turns back around and rushes for her backpack.

Harry hurries back up the stairs two steps at a time. Flinging open the closet doors, he stands on tiptoes to glimpse the shelf that resides above the hanging rack. He rummages around blindly until he feels something that seems like a bag, ripping it from the shelf and not caring about the thump of other items falling to the floor. He’s managed an old duffle, and quickly begins shoving some clothes in there – the ones Liam bought for him – before moving to the bathroom and shoving toothpaste and his brush in there, too. He doesn’t know where they’ll go – home seems too dangerous, not when they could find him easily. They might have to rough it for a bit, hide out in motels and crash on strangers’ sofas.

There’s a futility to it all that makes Harry’s blood freeze up, but he can’t stop now, his sister waiting for him downstairs, her heart thumping so loud it’s almost deafening.

He’s about to disappear from the room, saffron a long-lost memory, when it catches his eye on the bedside furthest from the door.

Clumsy fingers fumble the photo, but Harry’s grip on it becomes strong enough to tear when he sees the image. He’s helpless to relax, rub this left thumb against Liam’s crinkly-eyed smile.

Louis’ got his cheeks puffed out, eyes crossed. Niall’s tongue is pink and sticking out obnoxiously. Zayn looks effortless, his face chiselled and statuesque in the background. Harry’s own mouth is parted in surprise. The photo looks like an old polaroid, its lines both blurry and noisy.

Swallowing, Harry shoves it roughly into his pocket, turning from the room without a glance back, thundering down the stairs as quickly as he can, his own panic and Zayn’s confusion ricocheting within his skull.

“Harry,” Gemma starts, meeting him at the base of the stairs. She sounds scared, “I didn’t– I only brought my bike, you know I can’t drive. It’s still out on the road. How–” She exhales shakily, her face pale, “How are we going to get out of here?”

“Liam left his car,” Harry tells her, thoughts tumbling over one another with every passing second, a small mountain of them building in his brain, “It’s ‘round the side.” Gemma’s eyes are wide, her lips parted. “I’ve got the keys in case I needed anything. They– … they trust me.”

There must be a certain kind of look on his face, because Gemma brings a hand up to cradle his cheek, thumb rubbing at his cheekbone. “You’re alright, H. We’re going to leave this place, and we’re going home to Mum. You’re safe with me.”

“Come on,” Harry chokes out, turning away and fumbling with his duffle, snatching up the keys from the hallway table and opening the front door, “They’ll be back.”

“They said they wouldn’t get back ‘til morning–”

“ _Gemma._ ”

She stops talking, rushing out of the house with Harry on her heels. He strides past her once the door’s shut, leading the way to Liam’s awfully outdated Toyota.

“It’ll be alright,” Gemma murmurs once they’re headed down the drive, a road paved due to regular use more than actual intention. He’s got the headlights off, and the slow roll of the car makes his palms sweaty against the steering wheel. They’re not going fast enough.

Gemma lands a soft palm on Harry’s left wrist, and he glances that way to see her eyes shining, her jaw clenched like his does when he’s determined. “You don’t have to see them ever again.”

 _I know,_ Harry thinks miserably, trying not to cry, _and that’s what scares me._

 

***

 

His mother doesn’t stop crying the first day she sees him. Gemma’s smiling through her own tears, and Robin holds him for at least five minutes straight, hand on the back of Harry’s head as he buries his face into Harry’s shoulder.

What Gemma tells them, and the rest of Holmes Chapel, Harry doesn’t know. No one asks him where he’s been, why he looks a little different, why he’s quiet and sad.

The unfairness of it hits Harry a week into being back home, how he’s finally where he’s wanted to be for months – in his childhood bed, his mum cooking for him, Gemma giving him a gentle ribbing when the silence gets too thick, Robin pulling him in for hugs without a word – and yet all he seems to feel is an emptiness within himself.

There’s no one else keeping him company but his own yearning thoughts, and that’s somehow the worst of it all. He’d grown so used to those connections, the knowledge that all he had to do would be to reach out, prod at one of them, and he’d get an immediate answer.

Zayn is quiet and has been since a few hours into Harry’s return home. Harry doesn’t know how to feel, ends up experiencing an awful cocktail of relief, anger, longing, and betrayal.

And still, there underneath it all, is Harry’s unexplainable and unmovable love for him.

He trashes his bedroom one evening during his second week home, emotions running high and energy bubbling beneath his skin’s surface. Sobbing, clutching his destroyed mobile in his hands, Harry doesn’t know what the point of any of it was. Why the fuck hadn’t his friends bothered to contact him after a week of radio silence? Why did he even get bitten? Why did they want him to stay? Why aren’t they even coming for him, if it was too dangerous for him to be around his family?

The irony is not lost on him – sitting with his back against the side of his mattress, sheets ripped, bookshelf collapsed, posters strewn across his carpeted floor – that maybe it’s precisely what he’s done, what he’s doing, that meant he had to stay away.

He resolves then to be better; not just for the sake of the impending full moon, but for his family. He hasn’t missed the worried looks his mother shares with his step-dad, the puzzled stares of his sister.

He’s tired of it, all of a sudden; this sea of emotions inside him, waves rolling into and on top of each other, a new surge of anger or disappointment or sorrow overwhelming him at any opportunity.

“H?” Gemma calls out through the door, and Harry sniffs loudly, wiping at his snotty nose. He doesn’t say anything, but Gemma opens his bedroom door anyway. She looks around, eyes wide, before she sees him in the middle of it – knees up to his chest, crushed phone in his palms – and stumbles toward him, hands gentle and loving when they brush through his hair, wipe at his clammy face.

“I love him,” Harry whispers, and his heartbreak must be obvious enough given Gemma chooses to say nothing, her face falling instead, “I _love_ him.”

“Come here,” she murmurs, pulling him into her as she twists to sit next to him. His head falls miserably to her shoulder, his own wracking with his sobs. “Shh,” she hushes him, rocking them from side to side, “You’re okay. It’s okay.”

She must put him to bed because he wakes up the next day, sun streaming through his half-closed blinds, to a pounding headache.

He can’t keep on like this, though, he knows – he’ll destroy himself, unsteady his wolf. Then he’ll become a Louis, running through the English countryside without a thought, desperate to get back _somewhere,_ hurting innocent people in the process.

Going it alone frightens him. He puts on a brave face in front of his family that morning, and the ones following; but the gaping chasm inside him rips open with every forgetful moment, Harry reaching out to an emptiness that will never respond. Not anymore.

“Baby,” His mum murmurs one week away from the full moon, cradling his face in her cool, aged hands. The kitchen only sounds the soft rumble of the boiling kettle, and the rest of their family sits in the living room, _Monty Python_ making Robin chuckle heartily, “You’re so unhappy.”

“I’m fine, Mum,” he tells her, because how can he explain the abyss that’s threatening to swallow him whole from the inside out?

“You’re not,” she disagrees, smiling sadly, “But you will be. I love you.”

“Love you, too, Mum.” He mumbles back, letting her pull him in closely.

Her faith centres him, and there’s a foreign strength in his muscles the rest of the week.

 _I can do this,_ he thinks the day of, thoughts firing every which way in the wolf’s excitement – he can feel it now, a part of him that sleeps only to wake on these days, stretching its limbs with a yawn and ready to run.

He makes sure his family go out for the night. He’s convinced Gemma to go back to Manchester – _“Hang out with your friends,”_ he’d told her _, “Don’t worry about me.”_ – and he’d booked his parents a romantic night’s stay at a bed and breakfast, persuading Robin to call in sick to work the next day.

The house is his own, but still he constructs a mechanism in the hallway that’ll keep him in, a series of strings and chairs up against knobs. He locks the door from the inside anyway, then nails the windows shut with some firewood he scrounged up in the daylight. He packs away anything valuable and accepts the rest will be unsalvageable in the morning.

He waits, legs jiggling with nerves.

Unlike his other full moons – forced, sudden, and then expected – this one seems to take its time, a slow burn of sensation. First, he starts to hear the neighbours next door; Mrs Hallam’s having an argument with her teenage daughter, the two of them hissing at each other petulantly. Then comes the sight; the crumbs on his desk visible to him in minute detail, down to every molecule of stale bread. Finally, his touch turns acute; the cotton of his t-shirt feels frayed, like the individual threads he can decipher through the pads of his fingers aren’t sewn together at all. It’s too much too soon and Harry quickly finds himself naked on his bedroom floor, staring up at the ceiling.

The pain twinges in his abdomen and begins to bubble up like water boiling over: simmering at first, and then overflowing in the blink of an eye. Harry curls up into himself, twisting until he’s lying on his side, legs twitching as he squeezes his eyes shut. Maybe if he can’t see it – the strand of his sister’s hair by the radiator – then it won’t be real, this transformation. Maybe he’ll wake up, and his uni mate Pixie will have left him a drunk voicemail from the night before. Maybe his stomach will be, again, so flat he could balance a glass on it.

Maybe Harry won’t be a werewolf when the sun breaks through the clouds on the morning of September twenty-sixth. Maybe he’ll be sans uterus and free from the imaginary threads that connect him to three other strangers.

Maybe he won’t be in love with Zayn.

At the mere thought of his name, Harry’s back gives an almighty crack and he can’t help but scream, panting through the sharp, unbearable pain that ripples through his body.

He’s sobbing into the off-white carpet of his youth, trembling, hair plastering to the back of his neck, his cheeks, his forehead with sweat. In his confusion, enduring the pain like it’s a particularly nasty torture session, his blunt but jagged nails scratch their way up to his neck, right as his nape, and dig in and in and in until his hair becomes matted with blood, his hands dripping. It doesn’t matter, none of it matters, because the bite still throbs worse than any other pain he’s in right now; and when Harry blinks open his eyes, he sees the hairs on his arms grow excruciatingly long. He blinks and blinks and blinks, cheeks clammy, and jerks when more cracks echo throughout the room. Grunting, he tries to turn over and lift himself up onto his hands and knees – but it’s a futile effort, and he collapses onto his stomach with a pained cry. The last thing he hears is his own shout turn deep and guttural; the last thing he sees is the nails on his hands hardening, elongating; and the last thing he feels is the God-awful stretch of his spine as his body grows a tail.

Then the world is black, blissful black, and Harry remembers the night in snatches of sight, sound, and feeling.

His hands – paws – stain red with blood, his scratching and clawing and clambering to escape a painful exercise that gets him nowhere.

He howls, long and hard, over and over for hours; to be heard, to be known. He howls, and his little lupine heart hopes his Alpha will hear him. He needs to, because the Omega is alone and he shouldn’t be.

The night is quiet, animals hiding away in fear at the new creature they can sense trapped away in the house up the hill. It’s not their business to go searching for it, so the creature remains alone, whining throughout the night until the first light peeks over the horizon.

Harry pants against his covers, and then suddenly he’s sobbing, wringing the material between his bloody hands as dawn has its first minute.

He’s naked, and although he’s not cold he’s still shivering, skin pricked with goosebumps. The serenity of the house doesn’t last long, with Harry’s hitched breaths and loud cries. He falls from the bed in an attempt to stand. Instead of trying again he simply curls up on the floor next to it, shutting his eyes tight on the blood-stained carpet and hoping sleep, death, _anything_ will take him.

It must be only an hour or so later that he starts, eyes flinging open. With a gasp, Harry sits up straight, heart rabbiting in his chest like it’s trying to burst free from its cage. He looks down, turning his hands over to see rust on his palms, caked blood that’s been there for hours. His nails are dirty and sienna-coloured. Worst of all, strands of white fur cling to his skin.

Harry rubs his hands against the floor hurriedly, trying to rid himself of the image. Looking around the room, there’s not much that’s changed; the bed covers are dishevelled, like Harry tried to fluff up the bedding with his paws before lying there in the last hours of the moon.

The floor is splattered with dried blood, and right near the door there’s a large smear of it. The door itself is damaged, the bottom roughed up by claws sharp enough to disembowel a human. It’ll have to be replaced.

The wood on the windows held with the nails, but the corners have been gnawed at. Harry moves his tongue around his mouth, feeling his raw gums but no splinters, no wood chips.

The rest of the room remains intact, bar the desk chair that’s been upturned.

Swallowing heavily, Harry stands on shaky legs to unlock the door, and then remove the wood from the windows with the hammer he shoved behind his recently fixed bookcase. He pulls on the softest joggers he has before climbing out of the window, careful not to be seen – though the neighbourhood is quiet, even the birds muted in their morning song – as he climbs down the side of the house, dropping the last few metres.

He creeps around the side and comes through the back garden. He’d left the door unlocked, and the knob turns with a click for him now.

Harry dissembles the strings in the upstairs hallway and puts the chairs back from whence they came. He grabs the cleaning supplies from the laundry and the kitchen, and then sets to work. He’s not entirely sure how long it takes him to rub out all of the blood stains – he uses Ammonia, after a while – but he puts the dirty rags in a garbage bag along with the fur he manages to rip up from his belongings, and then he puts it in the larger bin outside, ready to be taken away in a few days.

The shock disperses when he climbs into the shower, staring down at his bony feet sandwiching the drain. The water is brown with dried blood, and Harry observes the swirls of water until they turn clear, and then he’s crying again, grabbing the soap to rub into his tender skin. There aren’t any wounds. There won’t be any scars. Nothing that happened the night before will show on his body, and the dream-like quality to it all is what makes the tears stop, his eyes simply tired and sore.

His mind thinks of one thing, and one thing only: Zayn did that alone at eighteen years old, with no idea what was happening. He woke up with blood in his mouth and dirt all over, and he had no idea what he’d become under the glow of the full moon. How was he to know it could be done any other way? How was Zayn to know that being around people didn’t necessarily mean you would hurt them? Louis had hurt his _family,_ even miles away. _How was Zayn to know?_

Harry’s young bones ache with promise; his wolf had been forlorn, lonely, desperate for the presence of his pack. _Harry_ had been desperate. However, it _was_ possible to survive the night alone, cut off from humans.

It’s not how he wants each month to pass. He fears that the wolf will become more aggressive the longer he locks it up. _But,_ he thinks with crushing relief, _it’s possible._

He shudders at the memories of the night before, his body tearing itself up to run free through the night; the lamenting howls of his wolf that would have echoed throughout Holmes Chapel. He’s sure to hear rumours of a wolf outside someone’s window. Swallowing thickly, Harry tries not to feel his foolishness; he knows precisely why he was kept away.

 _“If you hurt someone, people will come looking for you,”_ Niall’s Irish lilt explains gently in his memory, _“They’ll look for us.”_

How many times could he get away with it? How many times would the town hear a wolf’s howl on a full moon and not start to get suspicious? How long before they’re carrying silverware around with them at night? How long before they realise Harry’s the only person not with them on those moon-lit nights? What then?

The betrayal he’s felt at the back of his throat since he left that cabin weeks ago dissolves. They did everything they could to protect his family. To protect him.

_“You’ve barely processed lycanthropy as it is.”_

Harry’d been stubborn, and he hadn’t thought past simply wanting to go home. It was never that simple, though. Going home meant gaining control, and to do so Harry’d had to know everything about himself. That was impossible with the way he was acting, uncaring of the others, not willing to learn unless it was his way of things.

He’s not completely at fault – Zayn should’ve explained everything better, should have sat Harry down and been honest with him from the beginning. He should’ve _been_ there from the beginning.

The past is a many splintered thing, however, and Harry could shower all day ruminating on the possibilities of the last few months; what should have been done, how everyone should have acted.

What’s important, at the end of all this heartache and pain, is that he made a choice to leave. And as a result, he knows now that he doesn’t want to do this alone, but he can’t go on like he has been – none of them can, it’s not sustainable.

He made a choice to leave… and he can make a choice to go back.

He finishes up the shower in a hurry, hair still dripping wet when he climbs into a hoodie and his oldest jeans. Grabbing Liam’s keys from his desk, Harry runs down the stairs.

“Harry!” His mother exclaims from the lounge. Harry glimpses her face, surprised at her presence but barrelling onward, anyway.

“Harry!” She shouts at him from the front door, which he’s left wide open. Liam’s car sits, dirty and unused, out the front of their house. Harry whips around to see his mother with a hand on either side of the door jamb, a stricken look on her face.

Harry doubles back, rushing into her arms and nearly bowling her over with the force of his embrace.

“I’m sorry,” He murmurs into her ear, her arms gripping at him fiercely in return, “I love you so much, Mum. But I have to go back.”

“Back?” She echoes, but Harry tears himself away, running back to the car and shoving the key in the lock and twisting.

“Harry!” His mum calls again, the last syllable of his name cut off when he slams the driver’s door shut. Pushing the key into the ignition, he turns his wrist out, grinning when the engine roars to life.

“ _Harry Edward Styles!_ ” His mum shouts, striding forward, eyes wide.

“I love you!” Harry yells through the window before ripping away from the curb, car jerking when he releases the clutch too soon.

In the rear view mirror his Mum lifts her arms up in exasperation, but then Harry has to focus on the road, narrowly avoiding a dog off its leash as he turns a corner.

The exhilaration of leaving, of having made a decision and created a solution for everyone keeps him going for the first half hour, breaths coming quickly and his veins sizzling with possibility.

Then the nerves hit him around the fifty-minute mark and he has to pull over to cough up nothing on the side of the A6.

He’s navigating his return by memory – vivid, lycanthropic memory – and manages to do so until he reaches the gates on the outer edge of the property. He could stop, open the gates by hand, and continue on; but he’s too impatient to steer the car on the bumpy trail through the woods, and instead simply gets out, locks the damn thing, and walks the rest of the way.

The closer he gets, the more fidgety he becomes, clenching and unclenching his fists in sporadic anticipation. Liam’s keys are wedged in his pocket, a discomfort that grounds him with every step.

On the edges of his mind, the threads are there; frayed, swinging loose, but _there._ He’s equal parts terrified and elated to reach out and grab onto them once more.

_Haz?_

Thoughts don’t necessarily have a voice, or a sound that Harry can equate them to; they’re impressions, first and foremost. And the tentative hope behind the call, the unease underneath it all – that’s definitely Niall, and Harry can’t help but start running, then.

Everything else from the beta is just a jumble or relief and exasperation and love, Niall alert and waiting for him. Louis creeps in at the back of Harry’s head, poking him in irritation. He can’t hide the newfound comfort he’s feeling, though; the relaxation of his metaphorical shoulders.

There’s nothing else, and Harry doesn’t bother to linger on that, not when he’s so close to finding out for himself; there’s a sense of satisfaction in being able to touch the feeling, feel it between his fingertips.

He likes the element of surprise this… telepathy hasn’t ever given him. It makes it easier, sometimes, when he can’t get the words out and articulate his emotions properly. It avoids that miscommunication. He’s easier to understand like this. Maybe that’s why it felt so natural to fall into Zayn like he had, their thoughts and feelings colliding until they were simply one and the same.

Although his muscles don’t ache and his chest doesn’t sting, the last mile feels torturous. He almost laughs at the dichotomy between now and that first month, when running in the other direction was all he had.

Then the house is coming into view and Harry recognises the outline of Zayn before he sees his face, pumping his legs faster in response. The unsettled feeling racing through his veins transforms into excitement between one breath and the next, and he can’t focus on anything but the slim frame of his alpha and the burning in his eyes.

Suddenly Zayn’s moving then too, sprinting forward, jumping over rocks and fallen logs. They barrel into each other near the forest line, and Harry’s talking into Zayn’s ear before he can think about it.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Zayn, Zayn, Zayn, I’m sorry, I love you–”

He feels palms cradle his cheeks with a soft slap before he’s pulled away from Zayn’s shoulder and then brought back in to his mouth, their lips crushing together with a sting. Tears slide over their cheeks and into their kiss as they lick into each other, desperate with relief.

Every nerve-ending sparks in Harry’s brain, an avalanche of _too little too much not enough forever and ever and ever–_

“I’m sorry,” he gasps, pulling back for air, bumping his forehead into Zayn’s and closing his eyes with a stuttered breath. His meat of his palms press gently into Zayn’s temples, and the flutter of his eyelashes against Harry’s cheekbone makes him exhale shakily.

“Don’t,” Zayn tells him, breathing deeply. Harry opens his eyes, sees Zayn’s lids closed, lashes blurry. His mouth is the darkest pink Harry’s ever seen it. “You don’t need to.”

“I do.” Harry insists, sliding his ringed hand down to palm at the side of Zayn’s face.

“If you do, then I do,” Zayn says fiercely, eyes dark with promise. His hands rest on Harry’s rapidly contracting and expanding ribs, thumbs digging in between bone as if to make sure neither of them are dreaming.

“Sounds like we’re getting married.” Harry teases with a wet huff of laughter, licking his own cupid’s bow and shuddering when his tongue grazes Zayn’s lips.

Zayn chuckles breathlessly, his smile barely there – and yet it feels like the most beautiful thing Harry’s ever seen, the sun shining through the clouds after months of torrential rain. Every phantom ache from the moon has left him, and his blood pumps new and hot.

“I want to be here with you,” Harry says fiercely, sobering. He flicks his eyes between Zayn’s, sees the softness in his face and the forgiveness in the quirk of his lips, “I choose to be here.”

“I’m sorry that it didn’t feel like a choice,” Zayn starts, and Harry shakes his head, murmuring disagreements, but Zayn continues, “I didn’t know how, I– … you were so different, and I didn’t want you or anyone else to get hurt to prove a point.” His eyes search Harry’s, one of his hands coming up to run through Harry’s unruly curls fondly, “I just wanted you to be happy.”

“I am,” Harry reassures him, turning his head to kiss Zayn’s palm, “I will be. I promise, Zayn. _Listen._ ”

He gently knocks their heads together once more, closing his eyes on a sharp inhale before he lets it out in one big breath, his thoughts filtering through their bond in the same moment.

Everything he felt and thought whilst he was gone – the worry, the betrayal, the pain, the undying love, the forgiveness – all exudes from him in waves, almost like a signal from a radio tower. A broadcast.

 _I’m here,_ it shouts to the forest. _I’m happy. I’m in love._

In the next second, they almost topple over.

“You great big prat!” Louis exclaims joyfully, his slim hands digging into Harry’s underarms in a tease. Niall brings his arms around all of them, cackling loudly.

“Bit much,” a voice observes from afar, and Harry pulls his grinning face up from the circle they’ve made, glimpsing brown eyes and stubble.

“Get your arse in here, Payno!” Niall yells, grabbing for the man once he’s close enough and yanking him into the group hug.

“Love you lads.” Liam proclaims, and Louis groans dramatically, rolling his eyes on a smile.

“Yeah,” Harry agrees, and Zayn’s eyes lock with his, “Same.”

Zayn’s slow grin is blinding, his tongue pushing up against his teeth and his eyes crinkling so hard Harry’s sure he can’t exactly see.

It doesn’t matter. Harry grins right back.

 

***

 

**THREE MONTHS LATER**

 

“And how’s the family?” Harry asks, picking at the chipped paint of Louis’ childhood home. He can hear the indignant squawks of his packmate in the other room, but the answering giggles of his younger sisters puts him at ease, even if he wasn’t exactly worrying in the first place.

“They’re…” Zayn trails off, and Harry can feel his gratitude over the phone. It’s not the same as in the flesh, their bond stronger than ever; but Zayn’s terribly easy to read these days. At least for Harry.

“Yeah,” Harry says, smiling. He pulls his coat more tightly around himself, the cold of the North still enough of a bite to chill a werewolf, “Louis is in his element.”

“I’m glad,” Zayn says, and he sounds genuinely happy – far from the composed alpha figure of the summer, afraid of letting anyone know what he was bottling up in his attempts to be the anchor for all of them. _“It’s a shared weight,”_ Harry had told him upon his return, _“and things are going to change.”_

“What about you?” asks Zayn, and Harry bites at his lip, frowning.

“I’m fine,” Harry tells him, even if he misses his family like he’s lost a limb, “Louis needed this more than I did.”

Zayn hums thoughtfully, and Harry can hear his mother calling for him in Urdu.

“Think your Mum wants a word with you.” Harry muses, twisting his mouth to stop from smiling too wide. Feels like that’d be something Louis would tease him about, if he saw.

“Might be,” Zayn answers vaguely, but the shout across the house sounds loud and clear in Harry’s ear, making him laugh. Only Zayn would think he could still come off as all-knowing Alpha when his Mum’s yelling for him to do something like clear the breakfast table. “Alright, I really have to go, babe.”

“Okay,” murmurs Harry, peeling away a large strip of paint accidentally and making a face. Luckily there are multiple coats. “See you later?”

“Lunch.” Zayn confirms.

“Love you,” Harry says quietly, closing his eyes.

“Love you, too.” Zayn replies, just as quiet. Then he’s yelling back across the house, his answer cut off as Harry hears the dial tone.

It takes Louis twenty minutes to say goodbye to his family, by which point Harry coughs pointedly, grinning when his shoulder’s shoved in response.

“Sorry, Jay,” Harry apologises, squeezing her in a hug tight enough to leave her breathless, “Captain’s orders.”

“I need to meet this Zayn,” She sniffs, but she’s smiling, “Who stole my boy away.”

“Mum,” says Louis, turning to the two of them, his twin sisters hanging off his arms, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I miss you, Boo Bear,” she says, and Harry relishes in the blush that suffuses Louis’ cheeks.

“You’ll come back, won’t you?” Daisy asks, and although she’s a lot older now she’s still Louis’ adoring little sister.

“Of course, Daise,” Louis assures her, “Wouldn’t miss you this long again for the _world!_ ”

She grins, grabbing him up in another hug before the two of them get into the truck, waving as they peel away from the Tomlinson’s drive.

“So, Boo Bear–”

“You shut your mouth, Styles,” Louis snaps, still blushing, “Speak a word of this to anyone and you’re dead.”

Harry lifts a hand in surrender, trying not to laugh.

The drive is just over an hour, and they spend it in relative quiet. Harry glimpses Louis’ soft smile as he gazes out the window, his heart fit to burst at how far they’ve all come.

“How was Ireland?” Harry asks when Niall gets to the house about a half hour after they do. Liam’s spending the holidays with Sophia, and Zayn’s yet to arrive, though Harry can feel him nearby. Maybe twenty minutes, if he had to guess.

“Ah, y’know,” Niall grins, “Boozy.”

“And what about Theo?” Louis questions, smacking Niall over the head as he passes him into the kitchen. He opens the shiny new fridge, perusing its contents despite the turkey sandwiches Harry’s assembling right in front of him. “You get a toddler into the pints, too?”

“He’s brilliant,” Niall enthuses, eyes lighting up as he unwinds his scarf from his neck, “Growing up so fast. Next thing I know, he’s goin’ to be bringing home the ladies.”

Harry raises his eyebrows.

“Or the lads. Whatever, Haz, don’t be facetious.”

Each of them is one sandwich in with mugs of tea at their elbows by the time Zayn arrives, thumb rubbing across Harry’s jaw as he leans down to kiss him. Harry’s neck twinges, but he smiles into it, anyway, fingers circling Zayn’s wrist.

Louis pushes at Zayn’s hip, causing him to stumble away in his surprise. “Not the time, lads.”

“It’s always the time.” Harry insists, but he lets it go.

The warmth of the newly insulated house has his cheeks going rosy red. He laughs as Niall describes a night out in Mullingar, stomach aching with it all an hour later. He’s cradling his tea, left arm hanging over the back of Zayn’s chair.

It still boggles him, to see where they are now. Louis, laughing in Niall’s face without a hint of derision; Niall, covering his face with his hands in embarrassment at his own drunken antics. Harry turns his head, looks to his left to watch Zayn. He’s gesturing, smile on his lips, as he berates Niall for being a drunken idiot.

None of this is how Harry pictured his post-Christmas celebrations, but the cabin – no longer rickety, or creaking, or about to break – feels homey and warm. The bed he shares with Zayn has a new mattress, and his mobile sits firmly in his back pocket, his family only a ring away. The tense line of Zayn’s shoulders has disappeared, and with it Harry doesn’t have to hide away his worries or concerns for the pack.

Splayed out on their bed are the textbooks Harry has to study to catch up on his uni work, his distance learning getting him through his degree. Niall works up at the local pub in Pilsley, charming the locals with his elaborate tales of mischief. Liam’s about to propose to Sophia and move all the way to London. Louis works at the largest day care in Chesterfield, teasing the kids and playing silly games that he takes home to them all, laughing when Harry engages with them enthusiastically.

It all seems absolutely normal, and Harry can’t help but feel a sense of pride over how far they’ve all come. He could take credit for it, if he were a more arrogant person – but he’d be naïve to dismiss the individual efforts of them all. The long full moons, Zayn coaching them through focusing their energies each month. The establishment of a routine for everyone. Finding jobs, continuing hobbies; making this property a home, and not a placeholder.

And through it all, Harry’s found his own family. They don’t share blood, nor does the law recognise them, but gone are the days where Harry would stare pitifully at his phone and hope for a call. No longer does he have to convince his friends to come by, to study with him or simply hang out.

He’s got his four mates now, and nearly all of them know how he feels within a second of him feeling it. It’s invasive, and sometimes Harry just wants to be left alone for a month; but without it, he wouldn’t have them. Wouldn’t have Zayn.

And when it gets too much, he just hangs out at Liam’s.

His chest feels tight, although it’s not a discomfort. He feels a little like floating, sometimes, when he’s with them. All of them together like this, talking over each other in their eagerness, brings the softest of smiles to his face.

Zayn comes back into focus then, and Harry catalogues every movement of his face, every quirk of a lip or crinkle of an eye. More than beautiful, Zayn is the full moon high in the sky, the four of them howling in jubilation. Zayn is lazy mornings in bed, ankles knocking together during gentle laughter. Zayn is Harry and Harry is Zayn, even through their differences.

He begins to grow hot once he tunes back into the conversation, pulling up the sleeves of his long-sleeved top, when Zayn freezes under his elbow.

“What is it?” Harry mutters, letting the other two chat away.

“You don’t hear it?” Zayn asks, frowning. Harry stills, trying to isolate anything unusual.

The forest is humming at this time of day, even if it’s winter. Birds twitter, the smaller mammals dart to and fro between the trees. It’s not quite cold enough for the creek to freeze, but somehow in the winter the trickle of its current sounds icier, clear and distinct.

But through all of that, the disturbance of leaves and the shift of hard dirt sounds. Harry plays at his bottom lip thoughtfully.

“Visitors?” He asks, and Niall seems to catch that, at least.

“We’re not expecting anyone, are we?” He enquires, tilting his head like that’ll help him hear better. His eyes peruse the room blankly, not seeing in his concentration.

“No,” Zayn answers, but he stands, tea forgotten, and makes his way through the doorway into the hall, opening the front door as if to greet these unknown guests.

Harry shoots the others a look, chair screeching as he gets up to follow. Niall and Louis are right on his heels, and they tumble out of the house together.

He’s not sure what he expected; maybe a stray dog, or a hiker off their trail. Not at all the group of women who emerge from the woods, the leader pushing aside a stubborn branch blocking her route.

They don’t seem surprised to see the four of them there – if anything, they look composed. Prepared.

However, as the wind shifts, Harry inhales deeply with it, eyes flashing at the scents that accost him.

_Alpha. Beta. Beta. Human. Human._

The alpha leads, her dark hair straight and sleek. Her eyes are kind, features angular and sharp. She wears a t-shirt and cropped trousers, her ankles bare. White shoes are more grey than anything, mud adorning their sides. Beside her walks a shorter woman, dark brown eyes and white blonde hair – obviously dyed – glinting with interest. She’s curvier than the rest though her legs, wrapped in tight jeans, promise athleticism. Beta.

The last beta is tall with long hair, lips quirked in confidence. One of the humans matches her height, though her hair isn’t as curly or as long, and she looks between her pack like she’s asking to speak. Along with the alpha, she seems to be the most muscular of the group.

Finally, a woman with dark skin and big, curly hair remains. She quirks a brow at them, her gaze stopping at Harry and sticking.

None of them speak, a strained stand-off. Harry wants to break the silence, but they’ve not talked about others – not for as long as Harry’s been a werewolf. He hadn’t exactly thought to ask after everything, too focused on balancing their own perilous dynamics.

It doesn’t seem to matter; the alpha’s eyes are kind, and most of her pack are now peering around her to stare at Harry in the same sort of way.

“I see you have an omega,” she states, and Harry’s never going to particularly like that they can smell it on him so easily, like it’s a warning sign his body is emitting out into the ether. Or a target. “Interesting.”

“I see you’re a female alpha,” Louis retorts, and Harry wants to wince at the arrogant tone he’s putting on for bravado, “Interesting.”

A couple of the younger women at the back snort at that, and Harry lets his fingers circle Zayn’s wrist, allows Zayn to lift his arm so their hands are clasped together, fingers threaded.

“Are we really goin’ to stand here and compare lengths?” Niall asks from behind him, and Harry’s mouth twitches in amusement. “Because I’ll beat the lot of ya, and that’s just plain embarrassing, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” says the confident beta up the back, her long hair tumbling down in tight waves, curling at the ends. She looks Niall up and down, a smirk on her face. “I kind of want to see what happens now.”

“ _Hailee,_ ” the alpha admonishes, though there’s a hint of a smile on her face.

“Harry,” Harry blurts out, striding forward to stick out his left hand. His right remains in Zayn’s grip.

The alpha looks down at his outstretched hand – the faded ink of his cross visible – and lifts her eyes to stare at him for a moment.

It stretches on – long enough for Harry to open his mouth again to break the awkward silence – until it doesn’t, the alpha grasping Harry’s hand firmly but with no ill-thought.

“Vanessa,” she introduces herself, smiling, “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You, too,” replies Harry, mouth stretching wide enough for his dimples to flash, “Come on in. We’re just having lunch.”

“Fantastic,” says the beta – Hailee – sidling past her packmates, pausing only to clap Vanessa on the shoulder, “I’m fucking starving.”

“Might marry this one.” Niall mutters under his breath; which fools no one with supernatural hearing.

“Raise your standards, mate.” Zayn tells him, letting go of Harry’s hand to follow Hailee into the house, shaking his head in faux disappointment.

“Where did you come from?” Harry asks politely as they all converge to enter the house.

“Not too far,” says the blonde, peering around Niall’s broad shoulders like they’re waiting in line at a buffet, “We were meeting up with the Thirlwall pack before we caught wind of you lot.”

“There–” Harry starts in a rush, pausing to take a deep breath at the blonde’s amused smile, “There are more of you?”

“More of _us,_ ” explains Vanessa, patting him on the cheek like a mother would a child, “You’ve got a lot to learn, Harry.”

He stares after her.

 _That’s okay,_ he thinks to himself as he walks into the kitchen, Louis snatching his mug away from the curious blonde with a playful scowl. _We’ve got time._

**Author's Note:**

> This definitely has the potential for a sequel depending on how it's received. I truly hope you enjoyed it, and please let me know in the comments your favourite moments! :)
> 
> [Here's the fic post!](http://zaynsmiles.tumblr.com/post/175974888945) And until next time, you can find me on [tumblr.](http://zaynsmiles.tumblr.com)


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